The Story
by Hawkeyeisbae
Summary: 10 years after the Sokovia Accords were enacted, Tony Stark has essentially become a ghost. The media hasn't laid eyes on him since "The Civil War", the only thing known about him is that he is alive. Reporters have tried for years to get an interview, but he won't see anyone. So, imagine Madeline's shock when his office calls her, a no-one, to set up an interview...
1. The Reporter

**The Reporter**

She supposed she should feel lucky, after all, it she was living the million dollar journalist dream. Against all odds, she was in Stark Tower, sitting in a conference room, a pile of donuts towering in front of her. A pot of freshly brewed coffee sits, already half consumed by herself. Another cup sits next to the pot, currently untouched, but she hopes not for much longer.

She had arrived at her appointment exactly 30 minutes early, she hated to be late to anything, and she wasn't about to let a mistake on her part ruin this. For she knew if she walked back into her office without this story, she would be fired without a doubt. They had been teasing the exclusive for months, and here it was finally time for her to do it. She's still in disbelief of the whole thing, when she arrived she had half expected to be turned away just like the other reporters that were waiting like vultures eagerly outside. But, when she had given her name to the not so friendly receptionist, the woman had nodded and told her to take a seat. She had picked up her camera bag and walked over to the exact spot she had been assigned, again it was probably stupid to think that she would be kicked out for sitting on a seat too far to the right, but she wasn't about to chance it. It had taken exactly five minutes for a man to arrive to collect her, slightly more friendly than the receptionist, he wore a full suit and an earpiece, marking him as security. He had motioned for her to follow him, leading her through a door into what was obviously a security checkpoint. She wasn't surprised, she had fully expected it, Stark Industries was after all a high profile, and high security company, the products that came out of the company's R&D department were unparalleled. And while no one knew for sure which ideas came from Anthony Stark himself and which ones came from his underlings, every success was credited to his name. So she had willingly submitted to a search, the man had been polite and professional about it, simply waving a wand around her. He had then asked for her camera, which she willing gave to him. He had then led her to her current location, a conference room on the third floor. She had been waiting exactly 20 minutes.

The most shocking part about being where she currently is she didn't ask for it. She would have never even dared do something so brave, millions of reporters had asked over the years since he had retreated from the spotlight after the Sokovia Accords, none had succeeded. Young reporters like herself were told to not even think of asking for assignments as big as this, and had he not asked for her name specifically she would have never been allowed to work through the glass doors downstairs. She had been brought to tears when her boss told her about the assignment over two months ago, her fellow reporters had been shooting her dirty looks for months, she had only just started at the paper, she was only a few months out of college and here she was about to cover the story that the public had been dying to know for almost 10 years. She had been working on the story almost exclusively since it had been assigned to her, all with her boss' blessing, for if she messed this up, it would be both of their heads. She had covered a few small profile stories, but nothing that took more than a few hours of her times. She had prepped an entire 3 subject notebook for this interview just on background information on her subject. She had learned everything she could from him, from his birth to 10 years ago when he suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. She had taped photos, written questions upon questions, notes upon notes, all so she wouldn't look like a complete idiot or an ass when she walked into this very room she is now sitting in. She probably knew just as much about Tony Stark, as he knew about himself

She reaches for her notebook, a fresh one, meant only for Tony's answers. She places it on the table and then smoothes over her skirt, a nervous habit. Her fellow reporters would probably laugh at her for bringing a notebook, they all did things digitally, and it was safe to assume so did Tony Stark. But she had always found something comforting in writing during her interviews, even though both a camera and a tape recorder would be rolling the whole time. She didn't work for a television station, but her paper was partnered with one, and when it had become public that she would be given an exclusive, they had begged her to film it. After a few hour-long conversations with Tony's publicist, she had gotten permission to do so.

The sound of a door latch sliding open catches her attention. She stands and waits in anticipation, she tries to steady her hands, but it's obvious that they're shaking. She folds them in front of herself and waits, staring at the door.

A slight look of disappointment falls across her face when she sees Tony's company publicist enter the room. The woman is familiar, she has been associated with Stark Industries for years, and has basically become the public face of the company for any public or charitable event. The woman walks into the room, a purposeful gait in place as the crosses to the young reporter. They both extend hands and shake.

"Georgiana." The woman says with a pleasant smile.

"Madeline." The reporter answers introducing herself.

"Yes, I know." The older woman replies while motioning to the reporter's equipment. "Gather this up, and I'll take you up to meet Mr. Stark."

"Oh, so the interview isn't happening here?" The reporter asks, honestly shocked.

"No, Mr. Stark hates conference rooms. I'll be taking you up to his private floors. He would like to do the interview in his living room."

The reporter doesn't question this, an interview in Anthony Stark's personal living spaces is more than she could have hoped for, it's something she would have never dared dream. It is something that had never been done before. She quickly gathers her things, throwing her backpack and camera bags over her shoulder, her knees buckle slightly under the weight but she pushes forward, following Georgiana so not to get left behind as the woman is already charging ahead out of the room. They both get into an elevator, and Georgiana punches in a series of codes, unlocking a separate panel with more buttons with levels marked on them. She pushes the button labeled penthouse and the elevator shoots upwards. When it stops, the doors slide open revealing a rather shocking site.

Madeline doesn't know what she thought a billionaire's home would look like, but it certainly is not this. The layout of the room is stylish and modern, the furnishings are obviously expensive, but overall the room looks no more impressive than her own apartment. The elevator opened right into an open concept floor, to the right is the living room, to the left the kitchen and dining and forward and to the right is an office like space and a staircase. Madeline assumes that the staircase leads to bedrooms. Georgiana motions towards the living space, obviously an invitation to settle in.

"Mr. Stark will be right down, he's expecting you but he's not used to being punctual. He was in the middle of a project and he told me to pass on his greatest apologies that he has kept you waiting." Madeline simply nods, too curious to speak. She walks over to the living space, noting the lack of personal touches. The entire living space gives off no more an impression of being lived in than a hotel room. There isn't a single photograph in the space, not a single item is out of place or left somewhere to be put away later. The kitchen is spotless, the office is neat and organized, the living space looks likes it's been untouched for months. Sitting down on the couch gives her the impression of being an intruder, she's not supposed to be seeing this. She's not supposed to know that Tony Stark, lives as if he's a guest in his own house. The space seems so untouched that she questions if he does, in fact, live here, it had long been established in the public eye that Tony had moved to New York after a terrorist blew up his Malibu beach house, but now seeing the lack of homey touches in this apartment, she questions if maybe he really lives in one of his many other properties.

It is five full minutes before she hears the arrival of the elevator, the doors sliding upon a little too roughly. Her eyes immediately are attracted to it, drinking in the sight before her. She witnesses, Tony Stark, who looks exactly as he does in her notebook full of photos if aged only a few years. He's mostly clean shaven, and nicely dressed wearing a white polo and a pair of dress pants. She notes that the outfit must have been at his publicist's insistence for she never found a photo of him dressed in anything similar to it. She notices that his mouth is pulled into a tight smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, suggesting that it is forced. But the most interesting part of him is his eyes, his bright blue eyes that would always sparkle in any of the photos she had ever seen of him. They don't sparkle today, there is no dance, no emotion at all contained in them. In fact, they look dead, blank and staring ahead as if they see nothing around him. Her mother had always told her that eyes were windows to the soul, and while it sounded cheesy, it had been good advice. She had studied people's expressions since she was a little girl, she was good at reading people, their emotions, their thoughts, their ideas. She could tell when someone was lying to her just by looking at their eyes. Through school and her short term as a reporter, she had seen lots of eyes, she had seen the lost eyes of prisoners on death row, the desperate eyes of suicidal people being talked down by police officers, the despaired eyes of those who had just witnessed a great tragedy, and even the eyes of the dead, but she had never seen a pair of eyes so lifeless. It's unnerving and it throws off her confidence, she had prepared herself for many situations, but she had never run the situation of talking to a man who was dead inside.

She realizes that he is crossing the room towards her too late, she stands when he has covered over half the distance to great her, she quickly smoothes her pencil skirt and then steps forward, reaching his handshake at the same moment that he offers it.

"It's nice to finally meet you, Madeline." He says, a joyful light tone flooding his voice. She watches his eyes and sees a tiny bit of life, so minuscule that if she blinked she would have missed it come to them. She quickly looks away, hoping not to appear rude for doing so.

"I'm flattered, Mr. Stark." She offers, focusing on his right ear so to appear as if maintaining eye contact. "The pleasure really is all mine."

"Oh, no." He smiles a playful grin. "It really is mine, it's been so long since I've met such a beautiful young woman. I hope I haven't inconvenienced you making you wait, time got away from me."

"Not at all, Mr. Stark. We're actually right on time, I just arrived early."

"I do admire punctuality, personally, it is not one of my strong skills, but I do appreciate when others can do what I cannot. But I suppose in your profession if you're late you'll miss the reason for arriving at all."

"I never thought of it that way, but I suppose that is true." He releases her hand and motions for her to sit back down on the couch. He moves and sits on the opposite end. Madeline reaches for her camera, but before she pulls it out she sees a flash of panic briefly run across her subjects face, she quickly places the camera bag back on the floor. "Is it alright if I film this interview as well, Mr. Stark?" She quietly hopes that she hasn't just ruined her chances by listening to his publicist's word.

"Yes, of course. Georgianna mentioned that a television station wanted to run the story. Go right ahead and set up your equipment, and call me Anthony, Mr. Stark was my father."

Madeline quickly pulls out her camera and a tripod, she clumsily sets it up, unaccustomed to using the equipment. It's been almost a year since she's picked up such equipment, yet alone used it, but by some miracle, she is able to assemble it and connect the microphone that she hands to Anthony. He expertly runs the mic up through his shirt and out of site. She then pulls out a tape recorder and places it between the two of them. The tape recorder gives her some solace, and she begins to relax. This is just another interview.

"I haven't seen one of those in a long time," Anthony says, motioning to the tape recorder, it is an actual tape recorder, recording onto actual tapes. Madeline blushed, embarrassed to have her old school technology pointed out by a tech mogul.

"I've tried newer devices, but there's something satisfying about holding a tape of someone's words in your hands. I did my first ever interview with one of these when I was 8, and I've used one ever since." She reaches to put it away, realizing that the video audio will be sufficient but Tony reaches out and stops her hand.

"Don't put it away, all the best things in life were recorded on tapes." He offers her a small smile. She withdraws her hand and settles it back onto her lap.

"So what would you like this interview to be about?" She asks. Her boss had never given her a storyline to prepare, which was part of the reason she had to research so much, her boss nor her had any idea what she would be walking into. It had been Anthony Stark, through his publicist, who had set up the story. Her paper had not contacted him, they had shown no interest in him in over five years, so it had come as a surprise to everyone when Madeline's extension had wrung displaying his company's number. They had been given little details, simply a time and place to show up too. They were flying completely blind.

"Did Georgiana not tell you?" Tony looks genuinely confused. Madeline shakes her head no, unable to currently find the words. Tony looks shocked, but he quickly recovers. "Madeline, I'm dying." The words are the last things she expects, they are mind exploding, boggling words that completely and utterly confuse her. Of everything he could have said she would have never thought those to be the words, she had imagined a million different situations. That he had built a new suit, that the Avengers were once again on good terms, that he was getting married, that he had a new product that he had developed, that he was donating all his wealth to a charity, but she had never thought that it could be possible for him to be doing something as simple as dying.

He allows her to collect her thoughts for a minute before he continues, he can tell that he has completely caught her off guard. He feels as if it is a little unfair that she hadn't received a heads up.

"I'm dying, Madeline," He repeats so she knows that what she initially heard was correct, "And I want you to write my life story. The one that will be published after I'm dead, the one that will expose my life, my failures, and my shortcomings. I want the world to know Tony Stark, the real Tony Stark so that everyone remembers me as I really was. I don't want to be someone who is immortalized and erased until only the good parts are left, I want everyone to know the good, the bad and the ugly."

"Why me?" The words come out weak and foolish sounding. She sounds as if she's a spooked child, there is no professionalism, no ounce of herself in the breathy completely bewildered sound.

"I read an article you wrote, about 4 months ago, on a death row victim. It was amazing writing, you really captured his life, all parts of it. When I was done reading it I really felt as if I knew that man that was being put to death. I mourned him, as I would mourn one of my friends. I know he wasn't a good man, but you made it so I felt it as a personal loss. No one has been able to bring out such feelings in me in such a long time… I've been looking for someone to write my story for a long time now, and after I read your story I knew it had to be you. No one else can do it justice the way I know that you can."

She takes a deep breath, processing all he has said, something inside her clicks and she is once again a journalist, she realizes that she should be recording, she presses start on both devices.

"Where would you like to start?" She asks, a slight wobble present in her voice.

"You're not going to ask me how I'm dying?"

"You'll get to it eventually." She says, her voice more confident.

"You're not curious?"

"We all die eventually, Anthony. That's not the interesting part, the interesting part is life. How about you tell me something about that."

"What would you like me to tell you?"

"Anything, after all this is your biography."

"My favorite breakfast cereal is Lucky Charms."

"I'll make sure that's my opening sentence." She says giving him a small smile.

"Good, it's an important life fact. Now you going to open that notebook I see peeking out of your bag and ask me a question or not?" She blushes and pulls out the 3 subject notebook. Opening it to the first section of questions, she pulls out the secondary notebook.

"You know, this is probably going to take a while." She says, smoothing out the page, testing her pen to make sure the ink will flow.

"That's alright." He says leaning back into the couch. "I don't have anything better to do."

"You know, usually a team of people works on something this big."

"Promise me it will be just you." He says leaning forward, he looks at her with such fierceness that she can feel her will bend to his. "It has to be just you, through the whole thing. No one else can do it justice."

"I promise." The words come out with such force and clarity she can tell that she really does mean them. He settles back down into the couch cushions.

"Then ask away."

"What was the first thing you ever built completely by yourself?"


	2. Introduction (Book)

**Introduction**

 _First and foremost, the most important thing for you to know about Tony Stark is that his favorite breakfast cereal is Lucky charms, I promised him before this story ever started, before I had any idea what writing his story would mean, that that would be the first sentence you would ever read. I can now say that I have fulfilled that obligation. The second thing that Tony Stark made me promise, is to never tell you the way he died. And somewhat sadly, I can also fulfill this obligation, for I do not know. It was the one subject in his life that we never touched upon, the end. We covered everything up to it, through many long sessions of interviews, fueled by coffee and pizza, Tony Stark confessed his deepest darkest secrets to me, myself and I. He told me things that I not even those closest to him dreamed could be true. He confessed his guts, spewing them on the table for my pen to scrutinize over. When I was first asked by Tony to cover the events of his life, I thought I had been handed a relatively easy task. Had I known how difficult this all would be, I would have never agreed. And for that Tony I am sorry. I am sorry that I hate that I am writing this story. I am sorry that I want to rip up these pages so that no one but myself may ever know what they contain, I am sorry that I am the sole person you ever showed your true colors too. I am sorry that every time you tried before me, you failed. I am sorry that I am know tasked with telling the others just how large those failures were. Tony, I'm sorry you're dead because that means that all these words, these stories are for nothing, for you will never be able to see how others react to them. You will never be able to see just how precious you are to the people you thought abandoned you. To those of you reading this, who knew Tony, I'm sorry to you too. For if you're reading this, it means that soon, you will know what I know, and like I said before, if I could I would rip up these pages into thousands of tiny pieces so no one else would have to bear the knowledge of what I know. But I can't do that, all because I made a promise before I knew what I was really getting into… this is the complete life story of Anthony Stark, owner of Stark Industries, Iron Man, an Avenger. The story is the complete biographical life of Tony Stark, no part has been stretched or changed by the author, all experiences are Tony's, I am only here to share them with you. If I can offer you one piece of advice, it is to read no further, for no one should truly know what is in another man's head, I know that now, and you shouldn't have to learn the same way that I did._


	3. Where Should it Begin?

"Where do you want it all to begin?" She had been talking to Tony for over two hours now, over the course of the interview, her camera had died twice and her recorder had used 2 tapes, and they had hardly started. She had learned more about Tony Stark in those two hours, than in the two months of research she had put into prep work. She had learned about his childhood, although a bit glossed over, his teenage years, the years after his parent's death, and up to the point where he was captured by terrorist. The descriptions he had given of such events had been brief but detailed, and he promised that he would go into more detail later, but the purpose of this interview was for her to get an idea of his life, so that by their already scheduled appointment the next day, she could come with a draft of how the book would be laid out. Tony had been insistent that the book not is chronological, he called it stuffy and traditional, he wanted her to choose what she thought the order of importance of the events in his life. For now, they were taking a short break, and she thought she'd use the opportunity to pick his brain a bit.

"Where everyone thinks it begins." He says while bustling around the kitchen preparing them a snack. She had been surprised when he had offered, she had assumed he would have a cook for such things. She had learned a lot about making assumptions over the past two hours, because up until this point, all hers about him had been wrong. "When I became Iron Man."

"You haven't told me about that yet."

"That's because it's not important."

"But you just said…"

"I know what I said, but to understand why I became Iron Man, you have to understand more than just that event itself. So right now it's not important."

"But that's going to be the beginning."

"I thought you of all people would understand that the beginning is not the most important thing, sometimes it's the end."

"What are you making anyway?" She asks observing him pulling out a carton of eggs from the refrigerator.

"Pancakes." He says simply, cracking the eggs into the bowl he begins whipping them.

"Pancakes, it's three o'clock in the afternoon."

"The biggest fault in our society is the fact that we label foods by what time of day is socially acceptable to consume them. I'm hungry for pancakes, therefore I am making pancakes."

"You don't like to follow rules do you?"

"You're starting to catch on Madeline."


	4. How do you define a life?

**How do you define a life?**

 _To understand Tony Stark, you must know the whole story, which is why it is so difficult for me to begin this book. To pick anyone part of Tony's life and say that is the beginning would be too much of a simplification of a complex string of events. That is why I know understand why most biographers start with the facts, birth, place born, etc. but this is also why I have been forbidden both by myself and my subject to start in such a way. When I asked Tony where he would begin his story, he answered, to begin with where everyone already assumes they know._

 _Anthony Howard Stark, for many years this was the name that was associated with the son of Howard Stark, it wasn't until 22 years after the father's death and one captivation that another name was given to the man, Iron Man. Born from the caves of Afghanistan, Iron Man was an escape from a terrible ending, he was a necessity for survival, the one lifeline that was offered was the one that Tony created with his own two hands for everyone else assumed he was dead. The United States Government left him for dead, his best friend had given up hope, there had even been a funeral, for it was thought that no one could survive a Stark Missile landing on their vehicle. And they couldn't, the missile took out the two cars in front of Tony's, shrapnel from the weapon shredded his vehicle to shreds, killing the young men and women who were supposed to be escorting him to an airport. Tony was left alone to fight for his life, he stole a gun from one of the dead soldiers and took out as many men as he could. That's when the second missile dropped and all of a sudden his world went black._

 _Tony Stark died that day, according to Dr. Yinson, another man held captive by Islamic extremists, he was dead for a full 5 minutes before Dr. Yinson was able to revive him. Shrapnel had pierced Tony's veins and entered his veins, Dr. Yinson was able to stop it from killing him by making the device to inspire the iconic Arc Reactor, that for many years was embedded in Tony's chest. The device was powered by a car battery, over half of his chest bones had to be removed to fit the device inside, multiple organs had to be moved to other places all on a crude operating table that was the breeding ground for infection. Tony lost over a month of his life to this operation and the infection that spread afterward, his memories of the time are few and far between. He remembers only snippets, one incident of waterboarding, another of a ransom tape being filmed, all while still under a haze of infection, half dead to the world. He had wished he was dead..._

"How'd you get better?" She asks, not understanding how the man in front of her could possibly still be alive after all that he had lived through in those few short months of captivity.

"I don't know," Tony answers her truthfully. "I just did. I woke up one day and I finally knew where I was, what was going on around me, and I tried to pull the thing keeping me alive out of my chest. I didn't fully know what it was, but I knew it wasn't supposed to be there. Yinson worked hard to keep me from removing it."

"Tell me about Dr. Yinson, what happened to him?"

"He didn't make it out of the caves alive… I realize now that he never intended to. He told me once while we were down there, that his family was somewhere out there waiting for him and that when we left that place he would join them. What I didn't know at the time was that at that time his family was already dead. They had died when he had been taken. I owe my life to Dr. Yinson, but until a few years ago I couldn't even speak his name…." Tony trails off, spearing a piece of pancake with his fork. He pushes it around in the sticky maple syrup for a minute before abandoning the fork altogether. "I got his revenge for him, I liberated his village once I got back to my lab and was able to develop the first suit that actually worked, I made sure that his final request was honored… but I still can't help but blame myself for his death. He died to save my life, and that is something I'll never be able to repay him for."

"If you could repay him for what he did, how would you do it?"

"I had met him, about ten years before, at a New Year Eve conference turned party, I blew him off. I didn't even realize that I had met him until after his death, I don't remember much about that night, some of my other demons formed from that same night…. If I could redo one thing in my life it would be that night, I would have given Dr. Yinson the time he deserved, and maybe if I had done that some of the other events of that night would have never happened…" Tony trails off. "Dr. Yinson is the man who opened my eyes to the world around me, for years I had been focused on my own little bubble. Things were happening around me that I was too ignorant to notice, people were dying due to me not caring enough to pay attention to my company, to my advisors to make sure everything was being done right. When I got back from Afghanistan, everything I did, I did with him in mind. Every action I took, I took to try to repent past wrongs. I knew that I was responsible….." He trails off once again, running a hand nervously through his hair, he yanks at it. He looks vulnerable in a way that Tony Stark never has before, at least not in front of any kind of public eye. For the first time ever, Tony Stark forgets about the camera, the reporter, and he lets his mask fall.

"We can be done today." She offers, feeling as if she's an intruder on so many levels, no one should see something so deeply personal, not when they are so disconnected from it all.

"That would be nice." He says, slowly collecting himself, he looks past her toward the window. She watches as he slowly puts himself back together, it's as if a suit of armor builds back up around him.

"Can I put any of this in my article, Anthony?"

"What?" He looks startled but more composed.

"My article, I'm a journalist, my paper is expecting a story."

"Use whatever you'd like… I'm not sure if any of it is relevant. What are you even writing?"

"I… I don't know anymore." She answers truthfully, when she had walked into this interview, the whole thing, the biography offer, the stories, the painful truth, it had all been completely unexpected, from the moment she had met him Tony Stark had eradicated all of her plans. All her prep had done nothing to prepare her for the man that is Tony Stark.

"Then why don't you wait?" He offers, posing it as the most simple solution in the world. "Tell your editor about our continuation tomorrow, postpone the release date, and maybe eventually you'll figure out what story it is you want to tell."

"That actually sounds like a good idea." She says, beginning to pack away all of her things. "Thank you, Anthony."  
"Call me Tony." He offers her a sheepish smile, pulling himself up off of the couch. He begins to walk towards the elevator. "You can leave the camera here if you'd like. It looks heavy."

"Thanks." She sets the camera bag back down on the ground.

"I'll see you tomorrow at noon, Shawarma restaurant two blocks down the road. I'll have Georgianna email you the exact address."

"Tomorrow then." She says, picking up the camera once more, realizing that if they're meeting somewhere else she won't be able to leave it.

"Leave it," Tony says turning around he leans in the jam of the elevator.

"But…"

"We're going for lunch, we'll come back here afterward."

"I really…"

"Fine, I was just trying to be nice." He shrugs and steps back into the elevator, letting the door close behind him. She hears the purr as the motor begins pulling the car upwards. She walks over, camera on her shoulder, and calls the elevator to her. She finds it odd that Tony left her alone in his home once again, but then again if there was anything she had learned about him, it was that he was prone to being too trusting.


	5. Blow you away

**Blow You Away**

A half hour after her meeting with Tony ends, she arrives back at her office. It's 4:30 already, and she's only returned to drop her borrowed equipment back off. When she arrives however, her boss is sitting in her cubicle chair, aimlessly spinning it around.

"How'd it go?" Her boss asks, standing up from her chair, he lets her shove the camera under her desk.

"Good."

"You have a story?" He asks, a slightly feverish look in his eyes as he imagines all the reasons that Tony Stark could have contacted his employee. "Is he rejoining the Avengers? Is the Winter Soldier's identity finally being revealed? Is his company going back into the weapon's business?"

"Nothing like that, I don't really have a story yet."

"What do you mean you don't have a story yet, you have been at an interview right?"

"Yes, I talked with Tony for over two hours, I just don't have a story."

"You interviewed the man for that long and you can honestly tell me you don't have a single thing I can publish in my paper? You do realize that it's not just your job riding on this story, it's mine. With all the hype we've put into advertising it, if we don't deliver this paper could go bankrupt."

"Who ever said that I was done interviewing him."

"Of course you're done, you're here right?"

"I have an appointment with him at noon tomorrow to continue our session, he had an appointment he had to be at."

"Oh, in that case, at least tell me what the story is going to be on."

"I can't tell you that?"

"You can and you will…" She cuts him off.

"No I won't, because like I said before I don't know what it will be on."

"He obviously had a reason for contacting this paper…." Again she stops him.

"He had a reason, and it's a good one, but it wasn't the paper he was contacting, it was me. Now, if you would like me to write something for the paper to publish, I can. But I can't tell you what it will be yet."

"What do you mean he was contacting you?"

"I mean, he doesn't give a rats ass if this paper publishes anything on him but he's willing to allow it. What he wants is me to interview him."

"You do realize that your job is on the line right?"

"I do." She answers confident, she straightens her posture. "And I realize that you have no leverage on me. So tomorrow I'll be keeping my appointment with Tony Stark."

"Can't I at least see what you got today?"

"No, not yet." She says taking the SD card from the camera and sliding it into her purse with the many tapes from their session. "But I promise, when this is over, it will blow you away."


	6. The Tragedy that is Iron Man

**The Tragedy that is Iron Man**

She arrives at the address Tony's publicist gave her at exactly noon. She goes inside fully expecting to have to wait on Tony, but after a quick scan on the dinner, she places him, half hidden under a baseball cap at the table in the far back corner. When she sits down at the table, she finds that he has already ordered a table full of food. His plate is full and he is currently chowing through it, she follows his lead and fills her own plate and though she recognizes none of the dishes, she trusts that they must be half decent or why else would they be eating here. She is pleasantly surprised when she bites into her first selection, the food is more than decent, it's amazing.  
Between the two of them, it takes exactly a half hour of complete silence for them to consume the entire contents of the table. When the food is gone, Tony motions to a nearby waitress for the check. With a quick wipe of his face with a napkin he drops a large amount of cash onto the table then stands up motioning for her to follow. She obliges, slightly surprised with how much of a tip Tony left, the dishes in the restaurant were not at all expensive, and he had left well over $200 on the table. He doesn't even look back as he exits the restaurant.

She follows him out onto the curb, where a car is waiting for them. Tony, oddly, takes the keys from the driver and climbs into the driver's seat. The driver walks down the road to a car a bit further back and climbs into that passenger seat. Tony revs the engine impatiently and she quickly gets into the car throwing her bag full of equipment into the backseat.

The car is a luxury vehicle, she knows nothing about such things but she guesses due to the eyes that are landing on them, that it is a particularly nice model.

She watches curious, as Tony effortlessly navigates his way into New York City traffic. She people watches as they crawl through the city, they're almost out of the city before she realizes that Tony is headed toward upstate.

"Where are we going?" She asks, slightly worried that she is about to be abducted by the billionaire.

"Upstate," He answers vaguely waving his hand. "I want to show you something… I thought since you were filming this all, you might as well get a chance to see some of the things I'm talking about."

"So what's this stop about?"

"People I once thought were my family." He offers vaguely, all while reaching for the radio. He places a cd into the player and enters a number. The bass of AC/DC comes crashing through the stereo, draining out all possible chance for further conversation.

 _Tony Stark was (is) a clever man, no one would ever dare challenge that. Most people who have just come back from the brink of death, cannot build a suit of armor meant to be an escape route, most men cannot trick a large terrorist organization into believing that said suit is a missile. Most men in Tony Stark's position would have died, but somehow Tony was able to survive. He was able to build the first Iron Man suit with crude materials and even cruder tools, in the middle of a cave in the backside of nowhere, Tony Stark was able to become the hero no one else was willing to be for him._

 _Iron Man, from his conception, has always been a man trying to right past wrongs, of himself and of others. Through every misunderstanding, every challenge, every attempt on his life, Iron Man has managed to fight through, has managed to be the hero that everyone needs. Many have accused him of being a man just trying to save himself, but that has never been his objective, even though it may come across that way. Never once has Iron Man tried to save himself above others. Even with Dr. Yinsen, Tony Stark fully tried to save that man's life. But it was not the fault of the man in the suit, that Dr. Yinsen rain into a hail of bullets, and at that point when a man has given his life for yours so you can repent your past sins, you save yourself. You do not let that man die in vain, for while it may seem selfish, anything else would truly be a selfish act._

 _I'm sure that you're curious about why Tony built a new suit once he was home safe and sound, surrounded by his billions of dollars worth of security and general civilization. I know that I was when Tony first started telling me his tale, and the answer is simple. Tony Stark had allowed weapons that he had designed to protect the men and women of America fall into the hands of terrorists. During his captivity, he saw numerous weapons that he had designed turned on not only himself but on American citizens. So, he built a suit, tested it, and then used it to get back all the weapons that an advisor in his company had sold on the black market, all while completely shutting down the weapons division of his company. He did everything in his power to repent his sins, and to fix things… but it wasn't enough._

Tony drives for almost two hours before he pulls off the main road onto a dirt pathway. The road is underused and they have to drive slowly to prevent it from damaging the car. It takes nearly twenty minutes to travel down the winding path that goes about two miles, when they reach the end Madeline stares in awe of a large building before her.

At one time the building would have been considered high class, and modern, now the glass walls and steel are covered in ivy and lichen, the building looks as if it's been unused for at least 10 years.

"Where are we?"

"It was supposed to be the Avengers new home, a little more private than SI Tower in the middle of New York... it was only used for about a year before everything happened."

"Why'd you bring me here?"

"I told you, I thought you'd like to see it."

"Is this the next part of the story?"

"Not at all, it's the end…" Tony trails off, and starts toward the building, at the front door he pushes open a panel and punches in a code. The lock clicks and Tony motions for her to enter inside. She does so, but not before first pulling out her video camera and her personal camera. Tony takes the later and begins snapping shots, narrating as he goes. She points the camera at him and follows along, allowing him to tell his story.

"This is where Bruce once ate everything in the fridge," Tony says snapping a photo of the kitchen, "doesn't sound as gross as it actually was. There was some food that was completely molded in the mix… he did it just to prove to Natasha that she shouldn't complain about there being nothing to eat."

He turns the camera and snaps a photo of the countertop.

"That's where birdbrain, Clint, used to polish his arrows. They could be spotless but he would clean every single one every day."

He snaps a shot of the breakfast bar.

"That's where Natasha taught Wanda Russian. I have no idea why, but it made it so Wanda had something to occupy her time,"

They move further into the building, entering a living space. Tony snaps a picture of the couch. "This is where we would all sit when Steve decided to give one of his long-winded speeches." Tony snaps a shot of the chest occupying the furthest wall. "The chest is where Nat would keep half of the military's arsenal. Tony sits down on the couch and snaps a photo of Madeline. "Where you're standing is where Thor would always stand with a pint of mead when he felt like I needed something to take my mind off of things." He quickly turns the camera away and snaps a photo of the wall across from him, it's covered in photos of the Avengers together, doing goofy things around their compound. "That wall was Wanda's project, she took thousands of photos, only her favorites ever went up on the wall…"

Tony motions for her to sit down across from him on the couch. She does as asked, but she feels as if the cushion is unyielding, screaming that she shouldn't be there. This isn't her spot and she's intruding.

"I was never supposed to be a part of the Avengers…" Tony muses, looking off into the corner past her head, he gives the impression of almost looking at the camera now set up on a tripod beside her but she knows he isn't. "I was deemed an ill fit by Natasha, long before Loki became a threat. SHIELD assigned her to spy on me, she was hired as my personal assistant when I promoted Pepper Potts to the CEO of my company. Natasha went by the name Natalie Rushman. She was good at her job, but what I didn't know is she was an even better spy. She wrote up a long report on me, and gave it to Nick Fury who was then the director of SHIELD and based on her observations, I was a narcissist, playboy, who didn't like to follow rules or play nicely with others… all things that at one point in my life were probably true….," Tony trails off lost in thought for a brief minute before he continues. "But I wasn't at that time, I was self-destructive, sure, but none of those other things. You see, I was dying of poisoning from my arc reactor, the element that powered it was as poisonous as if I left the shrapnel to kill me. I was desperate and out of answers. I had no idea what to do, so I was doing everything in my power to make sure that I went out in a way that people would remember. At the time, I didn't care how people saw me, or about any consequences, because I thought I wouldn't be around to face them… It wasn't until after I had a huge fight with my best friend and nearly blew up my mansion that I someone offered me a lifeline. Nick Fury gave me all of the things my father had left behind at SHIELD, in it's contents I found the idea for the element Starkium, my father was never able to prove it existed the tech simply didn't exist at the time, but he left it for me to discover... From beyond the grave, my father saved my life. Starkium, as I named the element, saved my life."

"How'd you get involved with the Avengers then?"  
"Loki," Tony answers with a simple shrug. "You throw an Asgardian hell bent on world domination, who corrupts one of the best SHIELD operatives of all time with magic, and things change, doors open up that had been closed before. I got dragged in by an Agent named Phil Coulson, he died shortly afterward, but he and I knew each other quite well. He called upon me, and Pepper and between the two of them they convinced me to see past my wounded ego to see that the world needed me."

"Was it easy?"

"Saving the world? No."

"I meant forming a team."

"It was the most difficult thing any of us had ever done, but somehow we managed to get through it relatively unscathed."

"They say that the World council sent a nuke at New York."

Tony's face visibly pales, he complexion goes clammy. She watches as he wipes his hands on his pants to dry some of the sweat that is suddenly there.

"They did." He says, taking deep breaths to keep himself calm. "The World Council, Hydra, as it turns out, sent a nuke at New York. We begged them not too, we had things under control. Half the city was torn up, but it was ending there was no reason to nuke it. At the time, I was the only one who could be airborne. The only one with the ability to save the city from the people who were supposed to protect it. So I rode a nuke through the skies of New York, I pushed a nuclear bomb into a wormhole, while aliens poured out of the sky. I rode attached to a nuke, directing it's flight pattern, into the depths of space fully expecting that I was about to die. I called Pepper Potts, to try to say goodbye, but the call cut out before she could answer. I rode a nuke into a wormhole, and I felt myself start to die. Once it was in space, I let it go, my suit had failed at that point, so I dropped off it and let myself fall…. And somehow I made it back through, at least my body did for I swear during that fall, with the whole world watching me, I fell out of the sky dead. Thor and Hulk caught me from the sky and waited for me to wake up when I didn't the Hulk roared. He literally scared me back to life…"

"You were a hero."

"No, I wasn't. I was stupid and scared shitless. I was just doing what no one else could do."

"You saved New York."

"But how many people died before I could do it."

"You saved the World."

"But not before almost destroying it first." Tony places his head in his hands and sighs, the weight of the past dragging his limbs downward. Madeline reaches up and shuts off the camera, there are just some things the world should never see.

An hour later, they've wandered into Tony's old lab, for the first time in five years, Tony sees one of his suits. He hasn't touched one in years, he had moved them all here for storage. Twenty suits line the room. Madeline watches as in an almost daze like state, Tony moves forward to the nearest suit and puts his hand on it. She watches as a single tear falls from his eye as he leans up against it. She abandons her camera and walks across the room, she then very cautiously places a hand on his shoulder. The small act of kindness gives Tony the strength he needs to go on. With great effort, he slowly powers on the suit. Madeline retreats for her own safety as the suit comes to life. She watches as it latches itself to Tony, encasing his body in Iron. She watches as the drops the facemask, yanking it off to the floor. She watches as he claws at the suit finally getting it to release him he collapses onto the floor, taking large breaths as he attempts to force air back into his lungs. She cautiously approached him once more, wondering if he needs medical attention. She wonders if perhaps the suit hadn't allowed any oxygen inside. She sits down so to be on the same level as him and pulls his head into her lap. With a practiced hand, she begins checking his vitals, his heart is still pumping, his lungs are still working, she feels his eyes on her as she works but she ignores them.

"I'm fine." He finally breathes, making no effort to move. "Panic attack. That's all." He states it as if it explains away everything, but she still doesn't know enough about him for such a simple explanation to make any sense. "I'll be fine." He murmurs, as he continues to lay on the ground his head in her lap. She carefully brushes his hair back. The action is intimate in so much more ways than it should be, but she can't help it, she can't just sit back and watch as this man falls apart.

It is a good half an hour before either of them move, and it is Tony who initiates the movement. Picking himself up off the floor, he once again walks over to the wall of suits. With a steadying breath, he powers on another suit. With a series of gentle clicks and murmurs, it opens to allow him inside, with another quick breath he steps inside and this time he stays there.

Madeline watches as the Iron Man lives and breathes once more, for the first time in almost five years, Tony Stark once again breathes life into his creation. She films him as he moves about the room, performing different maintenance checks of the suit as he goes. She films him as he attempts to fly for the first time in many years, she watches him succeed. She watches as for a moment, Tony Stark once again embraces the idea of Iron Man.

Tony loads a single suit, shrinking it down into the size of a suitcase, into the trunk of the car, slamming it shut. Madeline waits for him in the passenger seat. When he gets in the car he hits the gas so hard his tires spin before the car begins shooting down the road. She closes her eyes as he takes the turns much too fast. She begins to wonder if he's trying to wreck the car.

It's ten terrifying minutes before he slows the car back down. He looks over to see her curled up in the seat of the car, her hands firmly clamped over her eyes, her entire body shaking. He instantly brings the car to a gentle stop on the side of the road. He realizes that he has done this, her fear was caused by him. He places the car into park and leans over the center console to touch her shoulder, without meaning too, she shies away from his touch.

"Hey…" He whispers, not knowing how to handle the situation, he had been so lost in his thoughts he hadn't realized how reckless he was being. "Hey… it's okay." He whispers again, this time firmly placing a hand on her shoulder he pulls her body toward him. He positions her so she is facing him and then backs away all touch. Her hands are still clamped over her eyes, and he can see tears pouring silently down her face. "It'll be okay…" He says not daring to touch her again. "It'll be okay, I stopped. You can open your eyes, I stopped the car. I promise I won't do that again." She merely whimpers in response. "I promise, Madeline, I didn't mean to scare you…" He watches as she slowly pulls her hands away from her face. Her makeup has run down her face leaving large black streaks, she doesn't even attempt to wipe them away. She says nothing as she stares at him, terror still present in her trembling hands. He holds his hands away from the wheel of the car, careful not to startle her. "I'm sorry…I didn't realize I was scaring you." Sh reaches up and wipes her eyes, but her stare never leaves his hands. They enter a stare off neither knowing what to do.

After about five minutes, Madeline finally turns in her seat, this time facing forward, she reaches and turns on the radio. Tony very carefully shifts the car into gear, when she doesn't protest, he takes off at a normal even somewhat slow speed.

Tony drives them back into the city, they stay in relative silence during the two-hour drive, the only sound between them the sound of the radio and the engine of the car. When they enter the city once more, Tony looks over at Madeline who is still curled up in the seat of his car. He feels terrible for scaring her. He cares for her, she's different from all the other reporters, all the other people in his life. She appears to genuinely care about him, and his past. She isn't nosy and she has let him lead all their interactions, a rare trait for him to find in anyone around him.

"Where would you like me to bring you?"

"What do you mean?" Her voice comes out sounding like a croak.

"Where should I drop you off? Did you bring a car earlier?"

She shakes her head, wiping at her eyes once more with the cuff of his sweatshirt sleeve. He had given it to her during their ride it had been in his back seat and she hadn't stopped shaking and he thought it might be due to her being cold. She hadn't objected and had instead immediately put it on.

"Where do you live?"

"The Four Seasons."

"You live in a hotel?"

"It's cheaper rent than an apartment, and I haven't lived here that long."

"But you've lived here at least 4 months…."

"Just barely." She answers with a shrug. "The hotel is nice, and like I said, I can stay there for less than it would cost to rent an apartment."

"So which one?"

"Which one what?"

"Which one do you stay at?"

"Fifth street."

"Is that where you would like me to take you?"

"It's as good a place as any."


	7. Sometimes it feels like the world

**Sometimes it feels like the World is B*tch Slapping You**

"There's a hoard of press outside." Tony remarks as they pull up to the curb beside her hotel.

"There's always a hoard of press outside…" She says not looking as she begins to collect herself and her things.

"No, they're looking for someone." Tony watches as a limo pulls up behind their car. He's curious about who could cause such a buzz. It's been years since he's been out in such a public place, and he's missed the buzz of a celebrity in New York. Both he and Madeline watch as a female's leg positions itself from around a door in an attempt to get out of the car. Mildly interested they watch as a woman with grayed red hair steps out of the car. They hardly notice that another figure exits the car, that is until he's walked around the car and taken her offered hand. Tony jaw goes slack as recognition floods his mind, he knows both people intimately. He feels rooted to the spot as he watches Pepper Potts enter the Four Seasons, accompanied by none other than Bruce Banner. Once both have safely made their way into the building, Tony feels his will to move suddenly come back. As Madeline exits his car, so does he. He pulls his baseball cap down low over his eyes, averting his gaze to the ground so it will be harder for the swarm of press to recognize him at least at this distance. He then walks around his car and grabs Madeline by the arm.

"Play along, please." He begs. When he touches her arm he notices that she is still freezing, he reaches back into his car and grabs the hoodie she had put back, he drapes it back over her shoulders and then grabs her hand. She seems shocked but she doesn't push him away. Instead, they walk toward the swarm of press together, most pay them no attention, a few appear mildly interested, but it's not until they are almost inside that one of them recognizes Tony.

"Tony Stark." She yells, turning all the heads toward him and Madeline. He tenses and quickens his pace, half dragging Madeline along behind him.

Cries of his name begin coming from all directions, thankfully before they can get too close hotel security steps in and pushes the waves of press back. Unfortunately, the commotion outside has attracted the attention of everyone in the lobby, including the two people Tony had wished to see only from afar. As he pulls off his baseball cap, he watches as Pepper drops the bag she was holding, her hand flying to her mouth. He also watches as Bruce looks at him with complete disbelief.

"Tony." Pepper gasps from across the room, tears that he doesn't know the cause of coming to her eyes. "Tony." She sobs, taking a step forward.

But it's Bruce who decides to close the distance between the two of them, covering the lobby in what seems like two steps he pulls Tony into a hug, clapping him on the back. Tony hugs him back, but his eyes stay glued on Pepper.

"I was going to come by the Tower…" Bruce says taking a step back. "I just got back into town."

"Where have you been? I haven't seen you in…." Tony reaches back into his memories for the last time he had seen Bruce.

"Probably 10 years, the Big Guy, decided to take a trip through the Galaxy for a while there. I just finally got back to earth only a year ago, and I've been in India… I didn't know how things were here so I thought I'd lay low. I ran into Pepper at a conference and she convinced me to come Stateside again."

"Well, I guess I'm glad I ran into you," Tony says, nodding to both Bruce and Pepper. Pepper nods and walks toward them.

"I'm glad too, Tony." She says in a way that sounds like it's only half genuine. "Who's your friend?"

Tony had completely forgotten about Madeline, who is now awkwardly standing a few steps behind him. "This is Madeline." He says, taking a step back, he places his hand on the small of her back and pushes her forward. He watches as both Pepper and Bruce fully register the age difference between the two of them, and he already knows the assumptions both of them have made.

"It's nice to meet you," Pepper says rather stiffly offering Madeline her hand for a shake. "I'm Pepper Potts."

"Nice to meet you," Madeline says, her voice clear for the first time in many hours.

"How do you two know each other?" Bruce asks, obviously trying to break some of the tension between the two girls.

"Madeline is a journalist, she wrote a stunning article a few months back on a death row victim. She's a genius with a pen. I've hired her to write a piece on me."

"On you?" Pepper's eyebrows shoot toward the top of her hairline. Of all the ways the two could be connected, this was the last thing she expected to hear.

"Yes, on me. She really has a gift at showing all sides of a story."

"So, she's writing yours?" Pepper challenges.

"Something like that." Tony mumbles and shrugs.

"Why?" Pepper demands, as Tony willingly telling anyone anything is highly out of character for the man she remembers.

Tony simply shrugs. "I guess I'm bored." He offers Pepper a half smile.

Madeline stares between the two, off at a wall during their interaction, sensing that it won't be over soon however she turns to Tony.

"I'm going to go up to my room now." She informs him while shifting the heavy camera bag on her shoulder.

"I'll see you tomorrow, 8 am. Clear your schedule for the next two days, we'll be taking a trip."

"You know…" She starts to say before letting it drop, while she's annoyed that he seems to think he can dictate her life, she knows that if she screws this up, even with all the material she already has, that she'll be fired. For she still doesn't have enough information to write a story. She's starting to think that he's being so sporadic on purpose. "Where should I meet you?"

"I'll pick you up." Tony waves her off before turning back to his two old friends.

As Madeline climbs into the elevator she notices that while the Press had been pushed back initially, they are now standing like vultures outside of the hotel, feverishly snapping pictures of the interactions between Tony, Bruce, and Pepper, she briefly wonders how long they had been doing so.

 _A/N: Reviews are much appreciated... tell me what you think. I want to know, the good the bad and the ugly... anyway I hope you've enjoyed the story so far._


	8. The Man Behind the Mask

Iron Man

The Man Behind the Mask

 _Anthony Howard Stark was once one of the most public figures in the world, at one time he was more recognizable than the President of the United States, and more people knew his name. And that is before he became Iron Man, the invincible flying soldier who it seemed was undefeatable. He was a hero for all, an idol, and then one day he simply disappeared. No one knows exactly why, but it can be guessed it had something to do with Steve Rogers. He was simply gone, faded from the public eye. We all thought the absence was temporary, a mandatory retreat for rest and relaxation to heal open wounds. We all expected that when we needed him, he would be there for us. It was surprising when that need was filled by someone else, a young upstart new york teenager, who for purposes of this article shall be unnamed. We all waited to see Iron Man take to the skies in assistance but we all watched disappointed. We began looking on the streets for signs of life, we stalked his homes, we watched for his car, we listened for any news, but he remained in the shadows. His company and the world marched on. We were reassured that the absence would be temporary, that everything was fine, that we would once again see Tony Stark but the promises appear to have been empty. It has been ten years and no one has seen or heard from him. But the world has marched on, children have forgotten his name, we continue on under the protection of others, and Iron Man has become a legend of the past._

 _None of this has stopped us from wanting to know more, we have simply been denied the means. We have attempted to fulfill our curiosity and now I can happily tell you that you can be satisfied. But what if I told you it would be better to let our minds wander, that our imaginations truly are better suited to coming up with an explanation we are willing to live with. What if I told you that if you knew the truth, you would wish you could give it back. That you would wish you could wrap the information back up into it's pretty little package sealed away in the curious part of your brain._

Madeline groans, she had been trying to write a start to her story for the past two hours and so far she had gotten no where. Her boss had emailed her asking for an update after her day with Tony, not having anything written to send him, she had mailed the photos that Tony had taken. She had thought they would satisfy him, but it had only peaked his curiosity. He wanted an outline of the article by the end of the night, but so far she still didn't know what to even write about. While Tony had told her many funny stories today, he had glossed over anything substantial, like the "Civil War", he had promised to get back to it later. He had no sense of urgency. She understood where he was coming from, she was writing a much larger piece, but for now she has to submit something to the paper or she's about to lose her job. She hits send on the email with a brief explanation that this is only the beginning, she then informs her boss that she will be spending the next 3 days with Tony Stark, she gives no further details because she has none. She has just sent the email when she hears a faint knock on her door, assuming that it's housekeeping she gets up to let them in. Since arriving back at her apartment about an hour before she has showered and put on a pair of old sweats, she pulls a blanket around her shoulders chilled and walks to the door.

"Who is it?" She calls, standing on her tiptoes to see through the peephole. At only five four, she's never been able to see through one and this time is no exception. She reaches out with her foot and kicks a light step stool over closer to the door. She steps up onto it to find that the peephole is still useless as the person is standing right up against the door. Slightly weary she slides the deadbolt and latch out of place and opens the door, her hand concealed in her pocket the number for security on her queued up in her cell phone. She cracks open the door.

"Hello." She calls to the person watching as they are taken off balance by her opening the door.

"Hello." A familiar voice answers back, causing her to step back from the door and open it wider.

"What are you doing here still?" She asks surprised to see Tony is her unexpected visitor.

"The press won't leave, and my car is parked out front. I've been waiting down in the lobby but it's pretty clear I won't be getting out of here anytime soon, so I figured we might as well keep working."

"You realize it's 8 at night, right? I'm not being paid to talk to you anymore."

"Is that the only reason you're speaking with me?" He appears hurt, she mentally slaps herself for being so insensitive.

"No, it's not. I think you're interesting." She grabs his hand and pulls him into her room. Other guests have realized who her visitor is and are starting to come into the hall. She firmly closes the door behind him and bolts it for extra security. "It's just, I was getting ready to just watch television and order a pizza."

"We don't have to talk then." He says taking a step back toward the door. "I can just go wait downstairs."

"No, stay." She bites her lip, concerned that it sounded like she was ordering him to stay. She watches as he raises an eyebrow in amusement at her. "I mean, you can stay. You don't have to wait in the lobby. I'll go get my tape recorder."

"Actually I liked the idea of that pizza, and I wouldn't want to change your plans."

"Pepperoni alright?" She asks, heading deeper into the suite. She motions for him to make himself comfortable on the sofa. She grabs the hotel's landline and dials Domino's number. Her friend Mark picks up the other end, they have a pleasant conversation of small talk before she places the order of 2 pizzas. He promises to deliver them in a half hour and hangs up. She begins popping popcorn all while watching Tony settle himself on the couch out of the corner of her eye. She watches as he sprawls out, kicking off his shoes and settling deep into the cushions, leaving just enough space for her to sit down in. He then grabs the remote and begins flipping through the hundreds of hotel provided channels eventually settling on the Food Network. When the microwave signals that the second bag of popcorn is done she dumps both into a large bowl and carries it over to the couch. She settles herself into her allotted spot, snuggling deeper under her still present blanket. She then passes the popcorn to Tony and wrestles the remote away. She selects the input for her DVD player and navigates to Netflix where she selects her current bing show, How I Met Your Mother, it's old and she's seen all the episodes at least once but she still enjoys it.

"I've never seen this." Tony says, taking a large handful of popcorn. Shocked, she exits out of the first episode she selected and goes back to the beginning of the series.

"How have you never seen it?"

He shrugs. "I don't watch much television."

"Why not?"

"Never been a fan. All it broadcasts is other people's business."

"You never watch sitcoms?"

"Not really. I used too sometimes with Pepper." He stares at the screen for a moment and laughs. "Apparently I should, this appears to be quite funny."

"It gets better the more you watch, then it gets bad for a while, but then it becomes gold."

They sit and watch in silence until the end of the first episode, after asking him if they should continue she clicks on the second. They've been watching the second episode for a while before he speaks again.

"Tell me something about you."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You know more about me now then most people who have known me over 10 years, yet all I know is your first name is Madeline and that you're a reporter who has worked here at least 5 months that still lives in a hotel."

"What would you like to know?"

"What do you like to know about people when you interview them? Introduce yourself to me like you introduce your interview subjects."

"My name is Madeline Corvo, and I'm 26. I graduated with a degree in journalism two years ago, but the job I currently have is my first in the field. I've been there exactly 5 months. Before that I worked at a no name cafe in the middle of nowhere, where I lived with my mother. I wrote stories for a local newspaper as a freelance reporter, little nothings about animal shelter pets and such. I worked days at the cafe and nights at bar. I saved tips spent barely anything all while sending my resume to anyone who would look at it. Eventually I got offered this job with a huge salary so I took it. I still bartend 3 nights a week." She shrugs. 'is that what you were looking for?"

"Not really." He offers her a sly smile. "But I guess it's a start. When's that pizza getting here?"

As if he cued it, there is a small knock at the door. She gets up from her spot and walks to the door. When she opens it she sees her friend Mark with a smile on his face and two pizzas in his hands.

"You're late." She doesn't mean it. "Pizza is free."

"You seen the traffic of reporters outside, it took me ten minutes just to get through them."

"They haven't left yet?"

"No, they kept mutter about a girl named Potts, Bruce Banner and Stark. I guess they may be inside here."

"Yeah, they are I saw them earlier."

"You got company?" He says holding up the two pizzas.

"Yeah, I've got a friend here."

" Got room for one more?"

"Don't you have to get back to work?"

"Nah you were my last delivery for the night."

"Hold on a sec." She closes the door and walks back to the couch. " Do you mind if my friend joins us?" Tony simply shrugs which she takes to mean no. She walks back to the door and takes the pizzas from Mark motioning for him to come inside.

"Pizza is on you." She says handing him a tip. He nods but his attention is already on Tony.

"Tony." She calls his attention away from the TV. "This is Mark. He bought our pizza from us." Tony nods again offering a friendly wave. Madeline places two slices of pizza onto three different plates and brings them over to the living area. She passes one to Tony then swats Mark away so she can settle into her spot again instead she offers him that chair on her other side.


	9. Rocky Start

The next morning she wakes up with Tony still at her side on the couch. Mark had gone home in the early hours of the morning. She slowly gets up and goes to her bedroom where she begins packing things for their trip. When her suitcase is full of things suitable for any climate she brings it with her out of the bedroom only to find that Tony has finally woken up and is in her shower. She waits for him while cooking breakfast. When he emerges from the shower she offers him some clothes of Marks from when he stays over at her place. She then takes the shower mumbling about breakfast being on the stove.

When she emerges from the bathroom freshly clean and dressed she finds Tony waiting for her at the kitchen table reading a newspaper.

"I'll order a car." He says getting up from the table while sliding a plate towards her.

"What's wrong with the one out front?"

Tony walks over and opens the curtains exposing a direct view to even more press surrounding his car.

"I think it will be easier to go out the back. I'll send Happy over to get that one once we've already left."

"Why are they still out there?"

"You're the journalist why don't you tell me?"

"Touche" She responds while moving to the sink to wash up the breakfast dishes.

Tony watches her mildly curious but he says nothing until she is ready to leave then he simply motions for her to lead. He joins her at her side and takes her arm leading her toward the service elevator stuck in the back corner of the floor.

"Back door." He reminds her as the elevator doors open. She follows his lead and steps inside.

"Where are we going?" She asks referring to their overall destination and not any of the immediate.

"Do you like helicopters?" He asks ignoring her question. "My plane is a few States over and the pilot is too lazy to fly to JFK so we'll take a helicopter from thereto the plane."

"I've never been in one so I don't know."

"Well let's hope you do." He says becoming mildly annoyed when the elevator stops descending. They both move over to the side expecting to be joined by a service cart they are unpleasantly surprised to instead be joined by Bruce and Pepper once more.

"Tony" Bruce says breaking the silence as the doors close, giving his friend a nod. "It's nice to see you again so soon. I was going to head over to the tower this afternoon to visit."

Tony offers his old friend a polite smile. "I'm sorry to disappoint Brucey but you'll only be visiting my home, Madeline and I are leaving the state in a few hours for a trip."

"I'm sorry to hear that I was hoping to catch up."

"You'll have to come by next Wednesday, I'll clear my calendar for you."

"That's very generous of you."

While Madeline has been paying attention to the two men throughout the exchange it is impossible to ignore the worst stink eye she has ever received currently coming from Pepper Potts.

"Pepper." Tiny says finally acknowledging the red head. " I was delighted to see that you found a seat in congress. You must love being a public servant."

"It's much more relaxing than being the CEO of a company, yes. And it's refreshing not to be cleaning up so many early morning messes."

"I don't know if you know but I donated to your campaign. I always knew you'd go far Pepper." The red heads gaze softens and she directs her eyes toward Tony.

"Thank you." She says reaching out and patting his arm as she steps out the now open elevator doors, Banner silently follows her offering Tony a small smile as he leaves unable to come up with the words to say everything left unsaid between the three of them.


	10. Ghosts

Four hours later, she watches Tony from over the top of her laptop screen. She's attempting to work on her story but the words are still avoiding her. In an attempt to draw some inspiration she's been watching Tony but he hasn't been doing much but drinking. He's on his third glass of scotch and has yet to look away from the window. It gives her some inspiration.

He couldn't seem to see past the ghosts that seemed to be in his constant company. Tony Stark was a haunted man, tormented by things left unsaid, undone. It could be seen in his every action, from the way he breathed to the way he donated over half his monthly earnings back to charities that he founded to curb the destruction he seemed to always leave behind in his wake. The ghosts could be seen in the bottoms of empty glasses of scotch, in the bottoms of the bottles that piled around him. They could be seen in the way he drew out a blueprint, how he always took extra care to lay out every detail, in the way that his ideas kept getting more and more advanced all in the name of increasing the safety of those around him. The presence of ghosts was obvious, but their identities were anonymous. On occasion, that anonymity faded and was revealed by looking into the eyes of the man they haunted. When he had found his way into his third glass of scotch, well before noon on a Wednesday afternoon, I happened to see some of these ghosts. A past self, self-absorbed and oblivious to the desolation his presence and very name left, a friend: left crippled and bruised for life, a young silver-haired boy- lost before he had the chance to do any good, millions of bodies- piled high for all to see what pretending to be a superhero really means. A mother, murdered before his eyes years after her death. A child crying reaching out for him, his mother buried alive under a pile of rubble. The abyss of the unknown coming forward for him to view, threatening to consume everything he knows. They fill the plane around us, and for a moment I share their weight and it is crushing. I want to scream, I want to tear my hair out, I want to shred myself to pieces so they will leave me alone. And then in a flash, they are gone as he looks away from me and back to the skies.

That flight took us to a place filled with even more ghosts. The ghost of a child, who had once held Tony's heart. Harley Keener, you may have heard of him if you're from Tennessee or from the MIT community. He was in the papers a few months before Tony's own death, just weeks before my time with him. Harley Keener was the missing boy genius, but he's not missing anymore. For those who don't know about him, he went missing months before the article I mentioned appeared. The reason he made the papers again was due to the fact that they finally found his body.

Harley had been the high profile victim of a terrorist attack. A domestic grown terrorist organization attacked MIT in 2017. They blew up a single classroom. Most of the victims of the attack survived, only one student was initially accounted for as dead. That student perished along with two faculty members due to the school held a service, but no one could ignore that there was still one student that should be honored. Harley Keener had been known to be in that room, but as they dug through the rubble for his body it was never found. He was considered a missing person, and the world searched for him.

The police had suspected that Harley had been the cause of the attack. They believed that the terrorist operation wanted to use him for his knowledge. Harley had been doing some deep research into cell regeneration, a continuation of Tony's own work from after the fall of the Mandarin. Harley was the primary researcher on the project and he had multiple grant and fellowship offers. When he went missing it became a top priority of the FBI to find Harley before it was too late, either for him or the rest of the world. Thousands searched, but they found nothing. There was no trace of Harley Keener. The case became cold. Two years after he disappeared everyone gave up. An honorary service was held in his name. It was five years before the case could finally be closed but it was not a victory. By accident, a group of construction workers found Harley's body when they went to break ground on a new building.

You're probably wondering, so what? What does Harley Keener have to do with Tony? For you to understand I first have to set the scene.

When Tony first took me to the house in the middle of nowhere, I didn't understand how it could connect to him. The house was little more than a shack. It leaned hard to one side and looked as if one stiff wind would send it collapsing. The roof bowed under its own weight, the windows were boarded and the driveway had begun to turn into a field. Off to the side of the main building was a shed. While the house looked like it was easy to get inside, the shed door was chained by shut by thick cables. A large padlock sealed the shed off from the world. The structure seemed better off than the house. It stood straight and looked like someone had recently put a fresh coat of paint on it. The shack really was in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town is almost twenty minutes away, the closest other relics of civilization is an old gas station with a pay phone still present out front. Tony, however, has no interest in the house when we arrive, instead, we head to the shed where he produces a key to the lock. He opens the door, it screeches on its hinges. We step inside and he turns on a light, the crackle of electricity the only sound. Tony walks over to a couch in the middle of the room and sits down. The shed is the house of a workshop, filled with old tools and projects.

"Harley lived here, in that house." He motions toward it. "I crashed in on his family once, after the Mandarin had blown up my place. One of my suits flew me about two miles away from here before it crashed. It was the middle of winter around Christmas time, so there was snow everywhere and it was cold. I needed a way to get out the cold, so I broke in here." He then pointed toward the back of the shop where there is a workbench that has been long abandoned. "Then a boy about ten years old attempted to attack me with a spud gun. My suit was not operational but still recognizable, the boy decided I wasn't a threat, so I fixed his potato gun. What resulted was me teaching him how to fix my suit, and him teaching me how to fix myself."

After their time together, in which Harley saved Tony's life more than once. Tony taught Harley how to build, how to think practically and how to turn ordinary things into extraordinary objects. And then Tony left, seemingly forgetting about the ten-year-old boy. He never mentioned him to a sole, but suddenly the boy's mother had a job where she wasn't working so much she didn't notice her son was keeping a stranger in the shed. Harley's middle and high school's science programs were suddenly funded. He was the recipient of many scholarships and was entered into contests, his fees waived under an anonymous name. Harley got into MIT on his own merit, but Tony financed his education. To Tony, Harley was like a son and losing him so tragically was the worst experience of his life.

"Did they ever find who did it?" She asks him placing a sympathetic hand on his shoulder from her place up on the back of the couch.

"Eventually." Tony sighs, looking around at the abandoned workshop. "But it was already too late, he wouldn't help them. So, by the time we found them Harley was long gone."

"Does his family…?"  
"Know? About me or about what happened to him in the end? Yes to both. They live in a much nicer apartment in NYC. His mother works for my company, his sister is attending NYU. They stay in one of my buildings, I look after them."

"So why?" She motions to the door.

"I like to come here when I can't stand being anywhere else. It reminds me of him, of everything he taught me. I was mentally ill when I met him, and somehow he was the only therapy that ever worked for me."

"Did you think of him as a son?" She cautious not wanting to pry too much.

Her question brings a small smile to Tony's face. "Yeah, I did." He says shaking his head at all the memories. "And I think I was his father figure, god knows his own wasn't much good."

She pulls out her camera and snaps some photos of the small area, she then goes out to the car to wait with Happy. She waits for nearly an hour before Tony emerges and locks up. His eyes are slightly red and he makes no attempt to hide that coming here is hard for him. Yet, he still has a small smile on his face as he climbs into the car. Harley would have wanted this, he would have wanted to be remembered.


	11. Society

"How would you like to go to a charity event?" They had just landed back in New York. After their trip to Tennessee, Tony had taken her to Miami and then to Malibu to tell her the rest of the Mandarin story. He took her to where his Malibu mansion used to stand, now just a cement pad overgrown with weeds. They had been gone a total of two days. Her boss had called her five times, he was getting put under pressure for her to produce a story. She had emailed him bits and pieces of her writings, promising a more cohesive piece in time. The last email had seemed to sedate him for now, he hadn't called in over twelve hours.

"Hmmm?" She looks up from her laptop screen pretending she didn't hear him the first time when really she's so startled by the request that she doesn't know what to say.

"I got invited to a gala, some kind of auction/dinner thing to support some charity that is trying to reshape the world. I haven't been to one in ages, but I figured…" He shrugs, playing off the request as if it means nothing.

"I wouldn't have anything to wear." She wants to go, but she doesn't know why he's asking her to attend.

"I'll have my stylist put you together something. The gala is tonight. Clint asked me to attend. That's why I'm going. He hasn't asked me to do anything in years."

"I would love too." She says having run out of excuses.

"Excellent." He looks relieved to not have to face the evening out alone. He's gotten used to Madeline's company, she's soothing to him, she makes the world a more bearable place to be out in. "I'll have Veronica come right to the tower with some things." He looks Madeline over sizing her up. "Size 10?"

"That's correct." She's surprised that he got it first try.

"Come back with me to the Tower. I'll order pizza. Veronica will bring over some dresses, we'll get ready and then we'll go."

"I should really go into my office first…"

"Alright, I'll come with you. You keep stressing about this deadline of yours. I'll talk to your boss, get him off your back."

"You don't have…"

"I want to."

"Thank you." She offers him a small smile as she collects her things to get ready to exit the plane. Tony waves her off when she goes to grab her suitcase.

"I'll have it brought to the tower. Just bring what you need the rest will be waiting for you when we get there later." She grabs just her laptop and backpack full of tapes and notes. She then follows Tony off the plane and into the back of a black sedan.

"I thought you always drive?" He had told her that fact a few days back.

He shrugs. "Sometimes I let Happy drive. It makes him feel important."

"And I thank you for that." Happy rolls down the divider between them. "It's always nice to know that my job isn't a complete joke."

"Aww. Happy don't sell yourself short. You're an important part of my security detail."

Happy snorts. "Yeah, you try telling your buddies that you're chief of security for Iron Man. See what they say."

"I thought we got past this, you're chief for the company."

"Yeah, yeah." His words are annoyed but he has a smile on his face.

"How about you roll up that thing again. Go back to eavesdropping in silence. Hmm."

"You got it, boss." Happy winks at Madeline then does as Tony requests.

"So what's the Gala about tonight?"

"You're going to that." Happy calls from the front seat. Tony rolls his eyes in response.

"What part of that is silent?" He calls to Happy before turning back to Madeline.  
"I think it's for underprivileged children. My company is a huge donor. Pepper set it up before she got into office after she left my company. Clint's the head of it now, he was bored in retirement, or at least that's what he told me. He's invited, everyone. I think I was only on the list as a courtesy since he assumed I wouldn't go." Tony shrugs. "I sent my RSVP in a few minutes ago.

"We're here." Happy pulls over and parks beside Madeline's office building. He gets out and opens the door for the both of them. Madeline gathers her things and follows Tony out of the car. She sees a few of her co-workers near the door, their mouths a-gap as they take in her present company. "I'll have to go in before you, of course." Happy jokes lightly. "Make sure everything is all safe."

"Of course." Tony laughs. As if he doesn't have the technology to sweep the entire building from here, but he still allows his old friend to go in first. Meanwhile, he and Madeline lean up against the car ignoring each other and those staring at them in a comfortable way. When Happy returns, Tony motions for Madeline to lead the way. Happy falling in step behind them.

When they get inside, Madeline flashes her ID for the security guard. She then checks both Tony and Happy in, procuring them visitor passes. They then go to the elevator where she pushes the button for the 12th floor. They ride up in the elevator in silence. Madeline still unsure of why Tony is with her. When the elevator doors open, she watches as heads turn to meet them. Her co-worker's eyes locking on her and her guests. She leads Tony over to her desk, where she sets her things down. She pulls him and Happy up two chairs from neighboring desks.

"You don't have an office?" Tony asks, looking around the floor at the many cubicles. He sees that most are unoccupied.

"Of course not, those are for Senior Correspondents. I'm lucky I'm not sharing a cubicle."

"With your talent." Tony scoffs. "If I was your boss I'd give you twelve offices." Madeline blushes at the comment, but hides it well, ducking away to turn on her clunky desktop machine.

"Maybe you should tell him that." She jokes as she drums her fingers against the desk waiting for her machine to turn on.

"Mr. Stark." A man strides toward them, emerging from such an office.

"Speak of the devil," Madeline mumbles, staring at her blank monitor.

"Mr. Stark." The man repeats extending a hand for Tony to shake. Tony only stares at it until the offer goes away. Her boss' smile falters for a moment but is quickly restored. "To what do we owe this pleasure. I hope Madeline didn't drag you here."

"No, no dragging was done." Tony ignores the man's attempt at humor. "I insisted on coming, seems as she wouldn't take the afternoon off to enjoy herself with me."

Her boss looks startled. He doesn't know how to respond.

"Madeline's an amazing writer." Tony continues. Madeline ignores him, as she begins checking her emails. In her negligence, she's been forwarded five requests for her to do articles, sixteen leads on stories and over twenty interoffice emails demanding to read her piece on Tony. She had been ignoring the emails in order to work on her story but now that she's here she starts replying to them, it's also an easy way to pretend that she's not listening to Tony.

"Really, I'm glad you think so."

"I think she's the best in New York, if not the whole country. I've really enjoyed reading what she's written about me."

"Is that so. I was under the impression that she had yet to finish an article about you, as you had requested."

"Oh, she's not finished. But that's my fault really, I haven't told her the full story. Have refused to actually. I hope you don't mind, but I'll have to hold her up for another two weeks at least before she'll be ready to publish anything."

"Two weeks. Mr. Stark, I have people pounding on my doors for her article about you. I've had fifteen magazines attempt to buy the rights to it, each with a higher and higher offer. Two weeks is simply too long."

"I'll issue a statement. Tell me to whom and I'll do so."

"It better be an amazing article. At least five pages."

"It'll be at least ten." Madeline chimes. "And that will be paraphrasing the overall story."

"Which is?" Her boss sounds annoyed.

"About my life. I've commissioned her to write a biography on myself. On her own time of course, so don't you worry about it. The article I've authorized her to write is just a section of the book really. "

"You don't say?" She can feel her boss' eyes drilling into the back of her head.

"Yes, so I hope you don't mind. I'll have to keep occupying her time for a while."

"No of course not, Mr. Stark."

"You're very generous." Tony offers a smile and shakes the man's' hand implying the conversation is over. He somehow convinces her boss to walk away without ever suggesting it out loud.

Madeline continues to work for almost a half hour before Tony insists that they must leave. She then collects her things and follows him out to the car where they head to Stark Tower. When they arrive in Tony's quarters, a rack of dresses is waiting for her to try them on. Happy takes them to an extra room for her and leaves her alone to get dressed while Tony goes upstairs to get ready.

She tries on several of the gowns. The first one she puts on is an emerald green and is covered in tiny diamonds. The gown glitters in the light and shimmers when she moves. It's loud and draws much more attention than necessary. And the color drowns out her skin tone. She puts it back on the rack. The second gown is a dark blue, that fades into a more sea blue with white accents. It's made of a satin fabric but follows an unflattering mermaid silhouette. She quickly rejects the gown.

The third dress is a simple sweetheart cut with an hourglass waist and a fluffy skirt. The dress is a dark purple and fits as if it was made for her. She finds a pair of black heels to go with it and some simple gold jewelry that Tony had also provided. She's just finished dressing when she hears a small knock at the door. She opens it to reveal Tony, who is dressed in a full tux. Seeing that the back of her dress is still open, he zips it for her. She then fixes his tie for him. He had left it untied unable to do it himself after years of not practicing. Pepper had always tied it for him, and since then he had never bothered to put one on.

They walk to the elevator together, Tony placing his hand on the small of her back to lead her. The gesture is platonic in every way, and she's grateful for it as it's been a long time since she's worn heels as high as the ones she currently has on.

They leave Stark Tower via a limo that Tony special ordered for the occasion. The drive to the event hall is one spent in a short silence. Both Tony and Madeline lost in their own thoughts staring out the windows at everything they pass by.

When they arrive at the hall, Madeline watches as Tony's whole body tenses. Every part of him that had been relaxed is suddenly filled with a tension that Madeline recognizes as anxiety. She reaches over and places her hand in his in what she hopes is a comforting way. He takes her hand like it is a lifeline and squeezes it. She scooches over in the seat to look out the window to see what he sees. The walkway leading up to the front door is lined with press, Madeline recognizes some of their faces. Various other socialites and other important people of mention scatter the walkway, occasionally posing for a photo, or striking up a conversation with another member of their high society. The front door of the building is heavily guarded, and they are all waiting for their turn to go inside. As their car pulls up to the curb, she feels her own body tense as the realization of what is about to happen comes crashing down on her. Everyone will be making assumptions, everyone will be photographing them, there will be no anonymity tonight. She suddenly feels just a portion of Tony's anxiety. Still, she straightens her dress and puts on a smile, reaching over to adjust Tony's collar. He smiles at her, she understands now why he invited her, she's the first person he's let see the real him, and tonight he needs a rock. He's tired of hiding, but he can't come out on his own.

Happy gets out of the front seat of the car, Madeline hadn't even known he was there. He opens the door of the limo for them. Madeline can feel as the attention of those gathered outside shifts to them. Some probably recognize Happy and know who works for, while others are probably just curious to see who will exit the car. Happy motions for them to exit, but Tony doesn't move. So Madeline works her way out around him first. She can feel the confusion and disappointment of the press when she emerges, most probably assuming she's just a representative for Stark Industries. She tries to ignore them all as she reaches back in the car for Tony's hand. She sees his face has turned white in terror, no matter what he might have told himself before, he wasn't ready for this. She sees that and ducks her head back into the car. She notices that while she does this, Happy moves to block her from view.

"We don't have to stay." She says, reaching out to smooth over his tousled hair.

"No, we do." He says a suddenly pulling himself back together. A resolve setting over his face as he recomposes himself into his public persona. "I'm ready." He reaches up and takes her hand which she squeezes while stepping back to give him room to leave the car. Happy moves to give them room but still block them from view. She notices that tonight Happy is not their only accompiant, a team from Stark Industries security has already started moving through the crowd. Once he is out of the car, Tony wraps his arm around Madeline's waist. He then motions for Happy to move out of their way. He takes charge once more and begins leading Madeline into the crowd.

It's impossible not to notice that the world has stopped around them at the emergence of Tony. Every set of eyes in the gathering around them is trained on them. Cameras snap feverishly. Reporters suddenly change their tune, suddenly switching from reporting live on the event to the arrival of Tony Stark. Tony slides a pair of sunglasses over his eyes despite the fact that it's now dusk. He navigates the crowd with practiced grace, weaving in and out of the bodies around them he pulls Madeline along with him. They make their way to the door after a minute, Tony not bothering to take any photo opportunities. He gives his name at the door and they are immediately ushered inside.

They've barely gotten inside when a beautiful woman with bright red hair approaches them. Madeline immediately recognizes her as Natasha Romanoff. Tony notices that she looks like she hasn't aged a day since he last saw her almost ten years before. He briefly wonders what the Red Room had done to her when she was with them.

Natasha walks right up to Tony and stares him in the eyes. Tony goes to say hello but before he can she reaches up with her right hand and smacks him across the face.

"We thought you were dead." Natasha hisses. "And now, this… this is how you come back?"

"Why would you think I was dead?"

"I don't know, maybe because no one has heard anything from you. No one has seen you. When we showed up at your home, we were turned away. We all thought…. We all thought something had happened to you and that your company was covering it up."

"You could have asked Happy, he's seen me."

"Happy's the one who told us that you were no longer with us."

"He never was good with rephrasing my words." Natasha stares at Tony unsure of what to say so instead she steps forward and pulls him into a hug.

"I'm glad you're not dead." She mumbles into his shoulder before releasing him. Tony holds her to him for a few seconds longer. He'd forgotten how good it felt to receive a hug.

"Me too," Tony replies finally releasing her. They both step apart. "I hear Clint's responsible for organizing this event."

Natasha snorts. "He's taking credit for it, but if it wasn't for Laura, Pepper and I there wouldn't be an event tonight.

"Are you surprised?"

"Not at all. Who's your friend?" Natasha finally directs her attention to Madeline, for the first time acknowledging her existence.

"This is Madeline, she graciously agreed to be my date tonight."

Natasha rolls her eyes and makes no attempt to greet Madeline. "She's over half your age, Tony."

Tony just shrugs, not wanting to tell Natasha how he really knows Madeline. So instead he changes the subject. "Speaking of guests. I have a feeling an old friend of ours will make an appearance tonight. One that hasn't been in the area for quite a few years"

"I know, Thor sent in an RSVP, he's bringing Jane and Darcy."

"Not Thor, but it's nice to know he'll be here as well. I ran into Pepper about a week ago, she had Bruce with her."

"Bruce." Natasha can't control her shock. "As in Bruce Banner, the Hulk."

"Yes, that one."

"Thor said he disappeared into the Galaxy a few years ago. He's been searching for him, but he hasn't had any luck. Are you sure it was Bruce?"

"Positive. We talked, it was him. I'm not certain he's coming tonight, but I'm not sure why he wouldn't be."

"How did you run into him? I thought you never leave the Tower."

"I took Madeline home about a week ago, and he was there checking in."

"Checking in?"

"Madeline lives at a hotel." Natasha rolls her eyes, probably assuming Madeline is a girl for hire.

"Make sure you say hello to Clint, he's around here somewhere. He won't admit it to you but he's missed you."

"He was on the list." Tony hugs Natasha one more time before grabbing Madeline by the waist once more, leading them both further into the event. Eyes follow them everywhere they go, hushed whispers follow them along with occasional flashes of light. Madeline shifts uncomfortably in her heels ducking her eyes so she doesn't see all the stares.

"Just smile," Tony whispers so only she can hear him. She glances up to see a large fake smile plastered across his face. "They can't make you feel uncomfortable if they can't make their stares bother you."

Madeline tries to mimic Tony and puts on a small smile.

"They all think I'm too young to be here with you." She mumbles as Tony leads her toward the dance floor.

"And they're right. If we were here romantically that is. You're almost half my age." Tony grabs her by the waist and begins leading them in a small waltz. Madeline, who has no dancing talent, follows his lead and somehow manages to keep pace. "Don't let them get to you." Tony mumbles in her ear as he spins her around the dance floor in small circles.

"How do you manage to do that?" She asks, unable to ignore the stares drilling into their backs.

"Truth is, I haven't been able to for a long time. When I was younger I just thought I was better than them all, but now I know that's not true."

"Then why are you telling me to ignore them, when you can't even do it?"

"Because you are better than them," Tony says with a small smile. "You're a good person, Madeline. And I mean that genuinely, I've met a lot of people over the span of my life but none of them are like you."

"How are you dealing with being here?"

"Better than I thought I would. Seeing Natasha was nice, we'll have to find the others later."

Tony and Madeline dance for 3 more songs before Madeline complains that her feet hurt. Tony leads her off the dance floor to the VIP section where there is an entire table reserved for him and his guests. Madeline sits down at the table and takes her shoes off. Tony orders them both drinks. They've barely been sitting for a minute before someone approaches them.

"I was starting to think you really were dead." A man says pulling up a seat beside Tony.

"Didn't you get my Christmas card?" Tony asks innocently.

The other man snorts. "The one five years ago of the bots flipping me off. Yeah, it's still in the fridge."

"Madeline, this is Clint Barton," Tony says introducing the man as a waiter brings over their drinks. "Clint, this is Madeline. She's a reporter."

"You're hanging out with reporters now?" Clint says accusingly.

"Times have changed my dear old friend. Who would have ever thought a bird brain like you could have put something like this together? Certainly not me."

"Watch the insults, you don't quite have the right to call me birdbrain anymore. We haven't seen each other in a decade."

"Yeah, about that… I'm sorry, Clint. How are the kids?"

"All grown up. Cooper is in college now. He wants to be a forensic accountant. Have no idea where he gets his brains from, certainly not me. He told me he wants to help people like I did, only not as dangerous."

"If he ever needs an internship. My accounting division currently has three open, I'm sure I could put in a good word."

"I'm not sure you want him near your business, he likes what he does a little too much. He'd run your finances through a comb so finely toothed nothing could slip through."

"It'd be good for the accountants to be put in their place, they're always so high and mighty when I go down there. What about Lila?"

Clint's face falls a little, Tony guesses his daughter keeps him up some nights. "She's good, she moved out a few weeks ago. She's engaged and in love. Can't say I really like the guy, but I think I've put enough fear of God in him that he'll never hurt her. He's got a good job at least, works out on boats, makes bucketloads. Which is good, I could never convince Lila to go to school, so she's playing secretary to a law office. She says she wants to have her own business someday, but… well, we'll see if that ever happens."

"So she's a handful. I bet high school was fun."

"Tons, it's funny how many times I shot out her boyfriend's tires because she thought she could sneak out… never the same boy twice though so they must have had something going for them." Tony and Clint both chuckle.

"And little Nathaniel?"

"He does ballet. Nat got him into it. He's pretty good at it too. She takes him to classes twice a week, and he competes in some competitions."

"You're okay with your son being a dancer?"

Clint shrugs. "He loves it. What kind of dad would I be if I wasn't?" Clint stood up and clasped Tony on the shoulder. "Don't be a stranger. I've got to go play host, but that doesn't mean I'm giving you permission to ghost me again."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Clint. Come by the Tower anytime, I'd love to have you and your family."

"I'll hold you to that, and if you even try to send us away. I'll break in. Do you understand me?"

"Crystal clear, Clint."

"Well then enjoy the night. I'll bring Laura and Nathaniel by next week."


	12. Anthony Howard Stark (Part 1)

Anthony Howard Stark (Part 1)

By Madeline

It had been foggy, it was the first thing he remembered about the night that his parents died. It had been foggy, and his father had been driving. They had left for Washington DC from their Boston apartment. Tony was eighteen at the time and attending MIT for his Masters in Electrical Engineering. His parents had come to visit him for the weekend, Tony was supposed to present an industry changing paper in Robotics the following week. His parents had already told him they would be unable to attend; Howard was presenting a prototype to the President the same day.

They had left late Sunday night, it was Howard who was driving. Jarvis, the family butler and Tony's "guardian" while he was at school had been feeding Howard drinks all day. It kept him happy, it kept him bearable to his son. As long as he didn't drink too much, according to Tony, Jarvis was a master at keeping his father just drunk enough not to be mean. He regrets remembering his father this way, but his father was a drunk. He was many other things as well but to his family he was first and foremost an alcoholic with violent tendencies.

Jarvis had offered to drive them to the airport, Howard had refused. He wasn't sober, but he wasn't drunk. He believed he was under the legal limit. Neither Tony nor Jarvis had argued any further.

So Howard drove, and Maria rode just as they always did. It had been around Christmas, Tony had just come home from studying abroad.

He had been napping on the couch right before they left. As he lounged, his mother sat at their grand piano and played a soft melody singing elegantly for her son. He had been wearing sweats with a santa hat. Not an important detail, but one that was burned into his mind. His mother had made him get off the couch to say goodbye to his father. They had exchanged quibs. The details of which are unimportant; it should just be known that Tony wishes those had not been their last words with one another. He did not say goodbye to his father. He had kissed his mother on the cheek and gone back to his room.

Tony's biggest regret about that moment is that he didn't know it would be their last together. He wished he had said goodbye that he could have had the chance to put everything to rest with his father.

He was unable to process his grief. "I was eighteen and alone. I was attending college with people who didn't understand me. I had just lost my parents. And I had inherited millions."

"I fully believed it was my father's fault; I thought that he was drunk and that it was his fault their car crashed. I blamed my father for killing my mother, and it was something I couldn't process or forgive."

"Apparently, I was a lot like my father." Tony says this with a look of distaste. "At least that's what Peggy Carter would tell me. She had been my father's best friend when they were younger. They had worked side by side on the front lines during World War 2 for the Strategic Science Reserve. They had been close. She helped him more times than anyone could count. She had cleared his name more than once, both in the public eye and in his personal life. She was my godmother." At the time of Howard and Maria's crash, they were both in their early 70's. Peggy was in her late 60's and had began experiencing early onset alzheimer's. "Growing up, Peggy had been in and out of my life. She didn't agree with anything Howard did after the 1973. Their arguments were legendary. They would fight for hours whenever she came around, so she stopped coming. It was a relief when she did, my dad was unpredictable enough when he wasn't challenged by Peggy. But, she was still there for me when it counted. She bailed me out of more than one stupid mistake I made that I wanted kept secret from my parents. She would pick me up from the ER, and pay off any journalists that may be nearby. She covered up more than one car crash I was in from my parents."

"I only saw her famous temper once. She screamed at me after my parents died. It was one of the last times I ever saw her. It was a week after their deaths, and I had missed their funerals. It took Jarvis and her almost 12 hours to find me. I was on the side of the road, in a wrecked car. She didn't remember who I was half the time, but for once her mind was completely lucid. I was half dead, at least that was her best assessment. I couldn't focus on her as she and Jarvis worked to stabilize me before the paramedics arrived. I'd crashed the car because I was drunk. I'm still not sure why I had gotten behind the wheel. I had drank through 5 bottles of $1000 scotch before going out for a drive. I'd almost died due to the exact same thing I believed my father had done a week before. Peggy lost it on me. The only reason she didn't finish the job I started was because Jarvis stopped her from laying hands on me. She was trying to set me straight. She'd lost my father, due to his own self-destructiveness. She didn't want to lose his son for the same reason. It sort of worked. She locked in me in a rehab facility until my injuries healed. They could have kept me past that, and would have if Peggy had insisted. But by that time, she had fallen deeper into her disease. She was only lucid a few hours a day. Jarvis had her put in a home against her will. He told me he didn't have it in him to do the same to me and keep me somewhere I didn't want to be. He asked me to stop being stupid. I told him I would try and we left it at that. I left him to deal with Peggy and went back to school. I should have stayed near them. I needed them to keep me straight. Without them, I continued to become more and more lost."

After returning to MIT, Tony began binge drinking. He threw lavish parties 3 nights a week and went out to others the other 4. As his father had in his younger age, Tony began sleeping around with large amounts of women. He had been a bit of a womanizer before his parents deaths. It reached new heights, without Howard's ironic disapproval of his son's life decisions. He was surrounded with people, yet he always felt alone. He had only one friend, General Rhodes or "Rhodey" as Tony calls him.

"I met Rhodey the first day I attended MIT. I was fifteen at the time, and fresh out of boarding school. I was the youngest on campus by far and most of my peers paid me no attention outside of the classroom. They weren't stupid, they knew who I was, everyone knew the name Stark. And I proved pretty quickly that I deserved the same amount of respect it gained my father when it came to scientific innovation, but it didn't gain me any popularity. I was a kid to them. My classmates wanted nothing to do with me."

"But, Rhodey was different. He was a freshman like me. We met at the college approved bonfire. He had just enlisted in the army to pay for his school. He was one of the few students on campus enlisted. At the time, the military still wasn't seen that favorably. So,being enlisted put him toward the bottom of the social pecking order. He admits he knew who I was and that he knew what my family did. He knew that I was the one person on campus that wouldn't judge him for being involved with the military. I had no right too with how my dad had made his fortune. So we became friends and stayed friends for the rest of our lives."

While Tony still remained in school, he began drawing an unhealthy amount of social attention. No longer an awkward teen he admits it was a time where he needed a role model the most. "I had no one and knew it. Jarvis, who had been with me for years, passed away of a heart attack shortly after my parents. Peggy, began forgetting me more and more, believing that I was my father and that she was back in the 1940's. The only one I had left in my life was Obie. One of my father's long term friends and consultant for SI. He had known me since I was a young boy, but he thought I was grown so he basically let me do anything I wanted. At the time, I had yet to inherit Stark Industries completely. While it was willed to me, I didn't own it until I turned 21 so for awhile Obie ran the company and I didn't really think about it. And since the company was all willed to Obie in the case of my death, he didn't really care to reign me in. If I killed myself with my antics, it only left him better off. Not that I knew that at the time."

He began attending more social gatherings, where he was introduced to the joys of alcohol, the liquid that could make him forget. "I drank and drank, I wanted to be numb and it was the only thing that would help. I was thinking all the time, analyzing the moment of their death over and over again. I would play my final words to them over and over again in my mind. I was drowning in my memories and alcohol was my life preserver, because as long as it was around the memories weren't as sharp. Eventually, I got introduced to other drugs, depressants and stimulants. I was a recreational user of each substance, but i was also an addict. I was addicted to the haze it put over life, it didn't matter what I used to get it."

Yet, somehow he managed to continue his professional life. He continued to develop weapons for his father's company, as well as complete other pet-projects. Projects like his AI assistant JARVIS, and his situationally-aware robots DUM-E, and U. It wasn't until another traumatic event occurred that he decided something needed to change.

"After a scare in Monte Carlo where I passed out in the stall of a bathroom and almost never woke up; I cut drugs out of my life. The scare I got that day made me realize that haze wasn't worth it; I didn't want to die. I wasn't suicidal. I just wanted to feel everything a little less. I got clean on my own, and haven't touched drugs since. I'm not saying I'm some miracle addict with who was able to cure themself of their addiction, I was just an addict who traded one vice for another. I didn't clean up my addiction, just the drugs." Tony began dating women in a casual way. He went from one to another, without much discrimination. He claims it was never hard to find someone to place on his arm, after all his was a young successful billionaire, not many women didn't want him. "I'm not saying I'm proud of that time, but I would be a fool to deny that it happened for a better part of 10 years. I didn't really have a purpose at that time. So, I kept trying to drown in the haze of causal relationships and inconsequential fun times. I wanted to distance myself from the world all while still 'living' and I thought that I was successful at doing so."

There was one women who Tony met in his young 20's who would have none of his antics. "Virginia Potts, Pepper, was the nickname I gave her. I first met her at a gala when I was 21. She was the assistant to some congressman who was there trying to drum up campaign donations. I never took my eyes off her that night. I watched as she followed him, her red hair shadowing her face. She was dressed in a nice ball gown, I think she was met to be the congressman's escort. He was younger, and unmarried, but she never said a word to him. She smiled, held his arm, followed him around the room and shook people's hands, but she never said a word to him. It took me almost the whole night to go up to her. She was different from the girls that usually threw themselves at me back then, and I could tell that even from across the room. When I went up to the congressman, his eyes lit up, I noticed it out of the corner of my eye but mine were still focused on her, her eyes stayed uninterested. I remember he was tripping over his words trying to earn my favor, my donation. I remember holding up my hand and telling him 'I'll fund your entire campaign if you let me steal your date for a few dances'. Obviously, the congressman had been ready to pass her off. He was fully ready to exploit what he thought was my drunken mind, he was willing to do anything for that money. But before he could make me commit to it, she had huffed and looked me straight in the eye and said, 'I'm not a bargaining chip, Mr. Stark. He doesn't own me and you can't buy me. And suggesting that you can is an act of attempting to be a jon which could get you put away for at least a year' The congressman had been tripping over himself in an attempt to apologize but I wouldn't let him instead I just smiled at her then him and walked away. Later that night I was sitting at my table, for once I was sober, but only because Obie had forbidden anyone from serving me that night. I had still been watching her, she was on the other side of the room, when suddenly I watched as she stormed over and promptly threw her drink in my face. She accused me of getting her fired, and was about ready to tear me a new one when I offered her a job. I offered to triple her pay and double her benefits on the spot not even knowing what they were, as long as she was willing to put up with me and keep me in line. Surprisingly, she took the job and stayed on as my personal assistant for 12 years. She got the nickname Pepper because it was peppermint schnapps she threw in my face that night."


	13. A Boy Named Peter

The next day, they wake up at noon. Madeline startles awake in a slight panic. Her panic wakes Tony. She looks confused. Her hair is plastered to her face, her makeup is smudged. She jumps up from the couch discarding the blanket on the ground. She starts looking around the room, she begins mumbling to herself.

"What is it?" Tony asks her rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

"I've got to get to work. I'm late." She picks her shoes up off the ground and places them on her feet.

"You're at work." Tony gets up from his makeshift bed.

"No, I've got to go into the office…"

"No, you don't." Tony places a hand on her shoulder. "I'm your assignment, remember."

She blinks a few times before signs of recognition begin showing. She goes and sits back down on the couch.

"I'll have Happy go and get your things from your hotel room." Tony takes out his phone and begins typing in instructions. "We're going to be leaving in an hour. Feel free to use one of the bathrooms to freshen up. There are linens and bathrobes in everyone." With that Tony bounds up the stairs toward his own room to get ready for the day.

They go to Queens that day. Happy drives them as he always does, but that day he doesn't leave. He leads the way into a rundown apartment building. The floors creak with every step and the paint is peeling from the walls. They have to buzz into the lobby. The doorman smiles when he sees Happy. He doesn't ask them who they're there to see.

Happy falls to the back of their group, chatting with the doorman as Tony leads Madeline toward a decrepit set of stairs in toward the back of the room. There is a nicer more cared for set before theses ones, and she almost points it out before deciding it's best to just follow Tony. With each step the stairs groan, she half expects them to break under her weight.

The go up 3 flights of the stairs before they stop on a landing. The stairs only lead to this one place, where there is a single door. Tony lets Happy pass in front of him to get to the door first. Happy knocks on the door precisely 3 times. While they wait for the door to be opened Madeline notices that the doorman has gone back to his post.

She hears noise from behind the door, it's obvious that someone is there but it takes almost five minutes before the door opens. Happy steps inside first, obscuring the occupant of from view. She hears him say hello, which is quickly followed by a muffled reply and soft laughter. Both her and Tony try to see around Happy, but it's useless.

She hears Happy mention bringing visitors as he steps further into the apartment. Tony is follows him in, and she follows Tony.

Behind the door is a small, but nicer than expected apartment. The furnishings and amenities look recently renovated and modern, not at all what she had expecting having seen the rest of the building.

The main room encoupases the living room, dining room and kitchen. There is only 1 other doorway, which is assumed to lead to a bedroom. She follows Tony over to a couch, her view of who they are visiting still blocked by Happy, who is apparently helping the apartments occupant into his recliner.

When Happy moves and goes into the kitchen to prepare them snacks, Madeline gets her first good look at who is hosting them.

He's young, yet he looks wise beyond his years. His face is creased with worry lines. He has lived a short stressful life. It has aged his face faster than his body. His lips are dried and cracked, years and years of neglect showing. They make him look as if he hasn't had a drink of water in years. They seem painful. His nose is slightly crooked, as if it had been broken multiple times and never quite set properly. His cheekbones are sunken, and hollow. Everything about him screams that he is not okay. The most striking feature of his face are his eyes. Heavy bags, are settled under them, etched permanently into his complexion. His eyes are closed halfway, the eyelids puffy and bruised looking. He keeps blinking to try to open them all the way but they keep falling back into place. All this contrasts his bright blue irises. At one time in his life, they were probably ice blue, but now they are muted. As if what they have seen has drawn out the color.

He has a lean build, he hasn't put the time into building up massive muscles but he's fit in a more natural way. She decides he can't be any older than 30, if anything he may even be younger than herself. As she assess him, she realizes why it had taken him so long to reach the door. A single crutch, the kind that only go just past the elbow, is settled against the side table beside him. His right leg, stops just above the knee. His left arm stops at the elbow.

"Madeline." Tony draws her out of her own little world. She realizes she had been staring. "This is my friend Peter."

"Pleasure to meet you." The man says, a small smile flashing across his lips. The action looks painful, and forced.

"You as well." Madeline replies. Her eyes drift back to his missing limbs, she feels rude but she can't help it.

"Iraq." He offers her another small smile. "You look like you want the story." She doesn't know how to answer him. "I'm ex-special forces. I got sent into a Taliban encampment, I lost comms, and my map. I walked through blind. I would have been fine, but I heard a kid scream and stepped into a building rigged to explode. Wrong place, wrong time, and now I only have two good limbs." He shrugs, as if it is no big deal, but she watches his eyes in anguish. "I guess even radioactive spider bites that give you advanced abilities, can't protect you from shrapnel."

"I told you that you should have never enlisted." Tony looks queasy over the site of Peter's missing limbs.

"It's fine, Tony." He rolls his eyes. "I don't miss them."

"You should at least let me..."

"No, you've done enough for me. More than enough, actually. You're not doing any more."

"But, I could…"

"I told you, nothing special. If you can mass produce it, fine I'll take 20. Until then, no. I've come to peace with this. I don't need to be fixed."

"But I could…"

"I don't need to be fixed." Peters eyes flash with the intensity of a storm. Clouded over and engulfed in raging flames. "I'm not some machine. I'm not one of your bots. And I'm not your son. Your not responsible for me, Tony. No one is. I made my decisions, I will live with my consequences."

"Pe…"

"I've made up my mind, Tony. I'm not the kid I was when you met me. You don't need to protect me anymore. I can take care of myself."

"At least…"

"No, nothing. You made your choice, Tony. Before I ever enlisted, before I even turned 18 you made your choice. You told me I was responsible. You gave me your blessing to fight the fights I fought were worth fighting.I found a calling greater than being spiderman. I don't regret enlisting, I don't regret my two tours of duty. I don't even regret losing my limbs. It's made me stronger than I ever was." Peter reaches over for his crutch. With a large amount of exertion he manages to stand up. Panting slightly, he points toward the door. "You and your friend can leave, Tony. I trust you can show yourselves out." With that, he hobbles toward the kitchen. He lets Happy grab his arm to steady him when he almost slips. Happy steadies him and helps him to the bedroom door.

Tony and Madeline leave. Tony leads the way out. They climb into Tony's town car, Tony sliding into the driver's seat. They leave Happy at the apartment. Tony will send a car for him later. For now he insists that Peter needs the help, and Happy is the only one he'll accept it from.

Later, Tony lets her know the rest of the story. He had taken her to see Peter because he wanted her to know the truth, but officially Peter had died in combat. He had too many enemies to have done anything else. In his state, even though he insisted otherwise, Peter couldn't protect himself. The man she had just met was Howard S. Rogers, obviously Peter had picked his new alias.

" _I first met Peter Parker when he was 16." Tony had seen a video on youtube, a grainy half focused video of a kid in a homemade costume, singlehandedly stopping a robbery. He dug into the story and managed to figure out who was behind the mask. "I went to his apartment under the guise of offeringing him an internship with my company. He was a smart kid, really into computer sciences. He went to a magnet school for gifted students, it wasn't hard to convince his aunt that he had applied for something I made up on my spot. And to be fair, the kid managed to not spill the secret." Tony went to Peter to recruit him for his side in "the civil war". He had Peter help him out, but was cautious. "He was just a kid and I didn't want him to get hurt." When they returned from abroad Tony assigned his personal security detail to watch over Peter. "The kid had a knack for getting into tight spots, but his heart was always in the right spot." Eventually, Peter was invited to join the Avengers. He declined the offer." Peter went back to being a kid. He was still a friendly neighborhood spiderman, occasionally stopping the odd robbery but for the most part he was a kid. Tony continued to help him, he watched over him. He gave him a personalized Tony Stark manufactured Spiderman suit that could prevent almost all harm from coming to him._

 _Peter was bright young kid, and Tony helped push him. He offered Peter an internship in his labs. He partnered him with some of the best engineering minds in the world. When it came to applying for college, he wrote a glowing recommendation to all the top schools in the country. Peter got into all the Ivy Leagues, MIT, and even all the military colleges. When Peter couldn't foot the bill, Tony picked it up. Peter attended MIT, Tony's own alma mater, for two years before he decided he wanted something more. After much thought on his part, and much protest from Tony, he enlisted in the US Army where he became a Green Beret._

" _I took him to the airport, the day he deployed for his first tour. By then, he hadn't been spiderman for a few years. He had given up his suit, pushed it into the back of a closet. He claimed he was strong without it, and he was. I won't speak on if his enhanced abilities played any part in him becoming a Beret, only Peter would be able to speak to that, but I will speak to the fact that he was a highly focused individual who with a goal in mind could achieve anything. But still, I was worried. I didn't want him to enlist. I had seen first hand what war could do to people. I had seen how we neglected our vets when they returned, and I had seen the inner workings of the Pentagon. I didn't agree with any of it. I didn't want Peter around it, and I knew that if he enlisted I wouldn't be able to protect him. Bringing him a new suit that day was my last chance. He refused to take it. I wouldn't make it standard issue for his fellow soldiers, so he didn't deserve the advantage. From the day I first met him, Peter was selfless, and fair minded. I wish he could have taught me those skills."_

 _Peter earned an Army Commendation medal following during his first tour. In his second, he earned a medal of distinguished service. And while he never returned from his third, he was honored with Medal of Honor, as well as a purple heart._


	14. Snow

The next day when Madeline shows up at Stark Tower, Happy stops her at the door. He says nothing, he just leads her out to a waiting car. Assuming that Tony is also in the car, she climbs in. She's surprised to find this isn't true, instead of Tony joining her it's Happy.

"Mr. St… Tony asked me to take you back to your hotel."

"Why? I thought we wer…"

"He'll be around later today. Right now he wants you to go pack your things."

"Are we going on another trip?"

"No… Tony wanted to ask you himself but an unavoidable conflict came up. He wants to move you into an apartment. You shouldn't live in a hotel, not if your going to make New York your home. There is a free one, at the tower. All private, completely separate from Tony's. It's just one floor up. Rent free."

"So you mean he expects me to accept charity?"

"No, no… it's just… he doesn't know how to charge for the apartment. He put it in originally for his friends. There are several in the tower, but they're now all unused. He can't rent them out. It would be a huge security problem on many different levels, but he does feel like they should be used by those he trusts. I have one. It's a great setup. Stark Industries pays for all the utilities for the building…"

Madeline sighs. While she doesn't want to accept charity, she is honored to be offered at all. She decides to give in. It's probably for the best anyway. There's only so much more of living in a hotel she can take.

She followed Tony outside. It was winter now. She had been following Tony around for six months. Ever since the summer had ended, he had stopped feeding her information for the book. She had written her pieces for her paper. They're now nominated for several awards. She had gone back to working on other stories, Tony had temporarily gone back to whatever it was he did during the days.

She had moved into the apartment above his. They still saw each other regularly. He would come by when she got home from work to visit. He'd ask her about the office, she would complain, he'd offer to take her out to dinner. Most of the time she took him up on the offer.

When they got back from dinner, she'd go back to Tony's apartment with him. He'd pick out a movie, he had a long list of favorites, she had never really been into watching them so he was trying to bring her up to speed. Most nights she'd fall asleep halfway through. In the morning, she'd wake up covered by a blanket, to the warm tones of FRIDAY, waking her up so she could get ready for work.

On weekends, they would go on trips. Tony liked to call them adventures. She had never really seen much of the world, and Tony had seen too much. He liked to take her to abstract spots, places that would never show up on a tourist map. Sometimes they drove, sometimes they flew, but Tony would always have her back in time for work Monday morning.

But today was different. She had come home early from work, it was snowing out and her interviews had cancelled on her. Not having anything else to do at the office she had requested to go home, her boss had allowed it. When she had gotten back to the Tower, there was a new guard at the front desk, she had been asked to show ID. She had none on her. After a few phone calls, Happy emerged from his office and let her in. Shortly after he issued her a new ID badge.

Tony had texted her that morning, he was leaving for a few days to visit Clint Barton. Since the benefit, Tony had kept his word about keeping in touch. He'd go to visit the Bartons regularly, as well as having them over to the tower. Madeline had even had the pleasure of being invited as well, she found his kids to be adorable. They had beaten her at every board game you could think of, she found them slightly less adorable after that.

She had left her favorite sweatshirt in his apartment, and with the snow she wanted to wear it curled up on the couch with a good book. She had let herself in, Tony had invited her to do so anytime. She had been surprised to find him in the kitchen, a cup of coffee in his hand, his eyes bloodshot from either lack of sleep or intoxication. He had smiled at her, but it was halfhearted, the kind of smile that isn't really a smile at all.

" y' home 'rly." His tongue had moved like lead, his voice was hollow. This wasn't a Tony she personally knew, but it wasn't one she was unfamiliar with. He was wearing an overly large pair of sweats that seemed to swallow him whole.

"Snow." She had pointed to the window. "No one wants to travel. I assume that's why you're still here."

He had shrugged. She took that as he had never intended to leave at all.

"Why you here?" He'd moved out of the kitchen and toward the couch. "Obviously it's not for my company."

"Sweatshirt." She followed him to the couch and grabbed the article of clothing. She hadn't been here for a few days, or even seen Tony. She'd cancelled on him the last 2 days, opting to go on a proper date with Mark the pizza delivery guy. Apparently, given by the amount of whiskey bottles scattered around the room, Tony had used that time to drink.

"Throw a party?" She asks innocently knowing full well that besides the Bartons and Happy, she's the only one who ever visits him.

"Something like that." He mumbles, lazily stretching out over the couch. "FRIDAY, be a dear, and close the shades." As he sprawled out on the couch, he forgot to set down the cup of coffee. He bolts upright swearing when the hot liquid spills on his arm.

She'd decided to adjust her afternoon plans.

She had gone upstairs to her own apartment and changed into comfier attire. When she had gotten back downstairs, Tony had been snoring on the couch. She had put on How I Met Your Mother, which was still her favorite show despite Tony trying to introduce her to finer cinema.

Tony woke up around her third episode. He didn't say or do anything at first, he just continued to lay on the couch.

Around the fourth episode she made popcorn, she split the bag into two bowls and gave one to Tony along with a cup of coffee. He seemed appreciative but continued to remain mute.

Around the fifth episode, Tony got up and left the room for a long time. He came back by the end of the sixth.

At the end of the seventh episode, Tony had looked much better. So much better that he gots up and turned off the tv.

"We're going out." He had declared. She had told him she needed to change her clothes. He told her there was no need, they weren't going out anywhere where that would be necessary. Instead he handed her one of his jackets, a pair of gloves and a knit hat.

They ended up one of the many generic black sedans in Tony's fleet. They drove for a few hours, until they ended up at a little cabin in the middle of the countryside. She followed Tony out of the car. It was still snowing. Tony walked to the middle of the yard and threw his head back, spreading his arms wide. Madeline didn't know what to think of it, especially when he started laughing. After a moment, she realized he was catching snowflakes on his tongue. She couldn't help but laugh, she ran over to him and copied his pose. Enjoying the snow as the cold flakes hit the end of her nose.

"Snow." He sighed. "Real snow." He chuckled, the sound was as pure as a child's awe, genuinely infatuated with the world around him.

She laughed too, she couldn't help it. His mood was contagious. "What do you mean, it was snowing in the city?"

"Yeah…" She can't see his face, but she guesses it reflects the childishness present in his voice. "But that's not the same, this is… pure. Free of the smog of the city, this…. You can't get this everywhere." He laughs again, before suddenly flopping down on his back.

She laughs and flops down beside him. "Where even are we?"

"A camp, near the adirondacks." Tony points off to the right in the distance. "Normally you can see them. I used to come here with my family, when I was a kid. It was the one place I felt…. Whole. Even then I was a mess. But when I was here… it all went away." He sighs.

"I'm gonna miss this." He muses, she looks over and sees that tears have welled in his eyes. "When I'm gone… I'm gonna miss this feeling… this…."

She feels a silent tear of her own fall. She'd known Tony wasn't well since the day they first met, but it hadn't sunken in until now. Until she watched a him realize that he would miss the snow.

They had stopped working on the book the past few months, because Tony had been getting worse. He told her one day that he didn't want to linger on it anymore. So they had taken a break, and just enjoyed life. But it hadn't stopped her from noticing the way he would stop after walking up a flight of stairs, clutching his chest. It hadn't stopped her from noticing the way he slept away most of the days so he could stay up for only a few hours of the night. His illness, whatever it was, was catching up to him.

Later that night, they've settled into the cabin. The roads have gotten too bad to travel back to the city. Tony sent Happy out to get firewood and some food. He'd just gotten back with both. Tony builds a fire in the fireplace, while Happy puts a kettle on of soup from a can.

They roast marshmallows over the fire and make smores. Happy and Tony tell stories of the past, keeping them all in stitches. It's peaceful, one of the moments you remember until the day you die. Lost in the company of good friends.


End file.
